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THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT  AND  SOCIAL 
WORK 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW   YORK    •   BOSTON    •    CHICAGO    •   DALLAS 
ATLANTA    •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON    •   BOMBAY    •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT 
AND  SOCIAL  WORK 


BY 
ARTHUR  JAMES  TODD,  Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR  OF  SOCIOLOGY  AND  DIRECTOR  OF  THE  TRAINING 

COURSE  FOR  SOCIAL  AND  CIVIC  WORK  IN  THE 

XmiVERSITY  OF  MINNESOTA 


Npm  fork 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1919 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1919 
By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  November,  1919. 


MM 

17 


SL> 


PREFACE 

Three  facts  have  conspired  to  overcome  a  natural 
hesitation  to  commit  the  enormity  of  another  book  in 
these  disturbed  times:     First,  the  exigencies  of  social 
reconstruction  demand  that  some  threads  of  policy  be 
offered    to    those    who   grope    through    the    labyrinth. 
Second,   the  unparalleled  official  recognition  of  social 
work  by  the  government — by  President  Wilson,  Sec- 
retary Baker,  Secretary  Daniels,  Secretary  Lane,  the 
governors  of   various  States,   and   others — ^puts   social 
workers,  new  and  old,  upon  their  mettle.    The  very  pro- 
posals of  statesmanlike  social  workers  which  were  form- 
erly stigmatized  as  visionary,  revolutionary,  or  immoral 
'^^    are  now  embraced  wholesale  as  the  social  creed  which 
r.   alone  can  save  a  country  in  its  hour  of  crisis.    Hence, 
—   social  workers  must  practice  the  humility  and  modesty 
of  science;  they  must  also  make  good  and  justify  by 
p  their  works  the  new  faith  placed  in  them.    This  means 
^.  a  constant  effort  to  refresh  their  own  mental  outfit  and 
~"  to  improve  their  equipment  by  every  possible  means. 
.  Third,    the   enormous   war-time   extension   of   various 
^  forms  of  social-welfare  activity  has  called  into  service 
^  hundreds  and  even  thousands  of  men  and  women,  some 
^^  of  them  only  partly  trained,  many  of  them  utterly 
untrained.     Whether   they   elect  to  seek  professional 
training  or  whether  they  enlist  only  as  volunteers  and 
amateurs,  if  they  are  to  become  permanent  assets  instead 
of  liabilities  to  scientific  social  work  they  must  somehow 
or  other  get  the  scientific  and  professional  attitude  toward 
their  work. 

Now  a  profession  is  distinguished  from  a  trade  by 
several  marks.    A  trade  is  based  on  practical  rules  and 


VI  PREFACE 

is  followed  for  a  livelihood.  A  profession  is  based  on 
principles,  a  thoroughgoing  knowledge  of  contributory 
sciences,  and  a  definite  code  of  conduct.  One  lives  by 
a  trade  but  in  a  profession.  Membership  in  a  pro- 
fession includes  the  obligation  to  extend  the  boundaries 
of  one's  science  while  maintaining  the  scientific  attitude 
toward  each  day's  problems.  Alfred  Russell  Wallace 
once  published  a  book  which  he  called  "Studies  Scien- 
tific and  Social."  Was  this  a  covert  slap  at  social  science 
as  distinguished  from  scientific  science?  Rather,  I 
think,  an  attempt  to  show  that  the  same  rigorous 
scientific  mind  could  compass  the  problems  of  both 
exact  science  and  human  society.  Social  science  and  its 
applications  must  share  the  spirit,  if  not  the  strict  tech- 
nique, of  the  exact  sciences.  The  elements  of  scientific 
approach  and  scientific  prevision  must  be  back  of  all 
social  reform  which  hopes  to  weather  the  storms. 

Since  most  of  real  social  reform  must  be  carried  out 
through  detailed  administrative  methods  by  social 
workers,  the  main  part  of  this  book  has  to  do  with  their 
problems.  But  it  seemed  advisable  to  restate  the  phil- 
osophical and  psychological  principles  upon  which  I 
believe  sound  social  work  is  based  and  by  which  it  is 
justified.  Moreover,  social  workers  as  well  as  other 
people  are  prone  to  become  so  absorbed  in  the  routine 
of  their  daily  work,  so  entangled  in  the  details  of  indi- 
vidual cases,  that  they  are  likely  to  lose  all  sense  of  per- 
spective and  to  become  unable  to  see  the  \voods  for  the 
trees.  Hence  two  or  three  chapters  on  the  trend  of 
social  movements  are  offered  as  a  means  of  orientation. 
Since  the  frontier  of  the  social  case  worker  joins  that  of 
the  reformer  and  propagandist,  surely  no  one  will  object 
to  including  some  cautions  to  social  reformers,  partic- 
ularly when  they  may  be  taken  with  equally  good  grace 
by  the  social  worker.  If  the  inclusion  of  such  concrete 
problems  as  why  workers  and  agencies  go  stale  or  how 
to  reduce  labor  turnover  in  social  agencies  seems  to  de- 


PREFACE  Vii 

stroy  the  placid  flow  of  our  philosophical  brook,  or  if 
the  introduction  of  crabbed  graphs  and  statistical  tables 
jars  upon  delicately  tuned  aesthetic  nerves,  the  justifi- 
cation must  plainly  be  that  science  is  not  only  an  atti- 
tude but  a  method.  The  scientific  spirit  will  justify 
itself  in  social  work  only  if  it  can  reveal  the  hidden 
potencies  of  individuals  and  agencies,  evoke  their  en- 
ergies most  effectively,  and  point  the  way  not  only  to 
solving  methodically  each  day's  problems  but  to  taking 
an  appropriate  place  in  the  whole  foreward  movement 
of  humanity.  However  the  argument  may  seem  to 
stray,  it  comes  back  constantly  to  one  central  theme, 
namely,  what  is  the  social  worker's  part  in  the  move- 
ments for  enlarging  the  charter  of  human  Hberties,  and 
on  what  terms  can  he  serve  that  cause  most  effectively? 
Since,  as  we  shall  discover,  the  scientific  spirit  signifies 
loyalty  and  cooperation,  it  behooves  me  here  to  tender 
my  heartiest  appreciation  to  all  those  friendly  social 
workers  whose  challenge  has  evoked  these  pages,  and 
particularly  to  that  large  group  whose  patient  self- 
analysis  made  possible  Chapters  VI  and  VII. 

Arthur  James  Todd. 
Minneapolis,  February,  1919. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

PREFACE vii 

CHAPTER 

T  NATURAL  RIGHTS  AND  SOCIAL  WRONGS. ...       i 

n.  THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  SOCIAL  BETTERMENT    17 

m.  RECENT  TENDENCIES  IN  SOCIAL  REFORM ...     38 

IV.  THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT  AND  SOCIAL  WORK . .     62 

V.  SENTIMENTALITY  AND  SOCIAL  REFORM. ...     86 

VI.  THE  DEAD  CENTER  IN  SOCIAL  WORK 108 

VIL  THE  LABOR  TURNOVER  IN  SOCIAL  AGENCIES  132 

VIII.  THE  ADVENTUROUS  ATTITUDE   IN   SOCIAL 

WORK 160 

IX.  SOCIAL  PROGRESS  AND  SOCIAL  WORK 193 

INDEX 208 


tx 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT  AND  SOCIAL 
WORK 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT  AND 
SOCIAL  WORK 

CHAPTER  I 

NATURAL  RIGHTS  AND  SOCIAL  WRONGS 

Modern  social-reform  movements  and  organized 
social  work  can  be  interpreted  from  two  standpoints: 
First,  as  the  concrete  expression  of  a  new  social  philos- 
ophy; second,  as  the  natural  consequences  of  a  series 
of  historical  facts.  The  first  is  a  problem  in  social 
ethics,  political  philosophy,  and  the  changing  mores. 
The  second  is  a  chapter  in  economics  and  poUtical  his- 
tory of  which  we  need  scarcely  do  more  than  review 
some  of  the  paragraph  headings.  The  agrarian  revolu- 
tion in  eighteenth-century  England;  the  industrial 
revolution  in  all  the  major  nations  of  the  Western  World 
saving  perhaps  Russia  and  Spain;  the  political  revolu- 
tions and  the  democratic  movements  of  the  last  century 
and  a  half;  the  new  means  of  transport  and  communica- 
tion; wholesale  world-wide  immigration;  socialism;  the 
development  of  political  economy  and  sociology;  trades 
unionism;  cooperative  and  municipal  enterprise;  and  the 
emergence  of  the  State  as  a  positive  welfare  agency — 
these  are  the  signposts  along  the  way.  It  is  indeed  an 
amazing  history,  a  record  of  turmoil  and  conflict,  of 
feverish  activity  and  hectic  imaginings,  of  stupidity 
and  heroisms,  reason  and  blind  worship  of  cherished 
fallacy.  But  this  whole  record  is  shot  through  with  a 
distinct  thread  of  social  philosophy,  no  less  striking 
because  not  always  explicit.     It  is  that  thread  which 


2  THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

we  want  now  to  pick  out  and  examine  as  a  guide  to 
formulating  for  social  workers  the  social  unfolding  since 
the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

In  the  year  1789  the  French  Constituent  Assembly 
pubUshed  to  the  world  its  famous  declaration  called  The 
Rights  of  Man;  and  Thomas  Paine  two  years  later  re- 
newed the  challenge  in  his  famous  pamphlet  aimed  at 
Edmund  Burke  who,  in  a  reactionary  frame  of  mind, 
had  ventured  to  criticise  the  French  revolutionists  and 
their  brave  declaration.  As  a  matter  of  history,  for  at 
least  three-quarters  of  a  century  Thomas  Jefferson,  The 
Declaration  of  Independence,  the  Constituent  Assembly, 
and  Thomas  Paine  seemed  to  have  won  out  over  Burke 
and  other  timorous  conservatives  of  his  day.  The  trouble 
was  that  while  Burke  was  technically  nearer  the  truth 
than  Paine,  his  fears  so  colored  his  reasoning  as  to  give 
it  the  appearance  of  prejudice  and  fallacy.  There  is  no 
forcing  of  analogies  or  misreading  of  history  when  I  say 
that  modern  social-reform  movements  and  social  work 
represent  a  series  of  concrete  attempts  to  define  and  redefine 
the  Rights  of  Man.  They  are  the  index  of  a  growing  self- 
consciousness  about  the  expression  of  social  "interests" 
in  law  and  economic  organizations.  At  times  the  social 
movement  takes  on  the  character  of  violence  as  in 
Chartism  or  the  American  Civil  War  or  the  philosophy 
and  practice  of  syndicalism.  At  times  it  appears  in  the 
theory  of  class  struggle.  Still  again  it  comes  to  Ught  in 
the  humble  guise  of  a  legislative  plea  for  a  living  wage 
or  for  health  insurance.  But  always  it  is  the  problem  of 
rights,  whether  natural  or  acquired.  And  whether  con- 
scious or  not,  it  is  pretty  generally  aligned  with  eight- 
eenth-century idealism  and  that  vision  of  social  justice 
crystallized  in  the  famous  trinity  of  social  demands — 
liberty,  equality,  fraternity. 

It  is  always  fairly  easy  to  formulate  an  indictment 
of  social  wrongs,  but  it  is  by  no  means  equally  easy  to  find 
a  convincing  way  of  righting  them.    If  a  people  resents 


NATURAL  RIGHTS  AND   SOCIAL  WRONGS  3 

the  encroachments  of  its  rulers  and  balks  at  being  taxed 
it  can  say  that  governors  rule  and  tax  only  by  consent 
of  the  governed  and  that  it  has  a  ''natural  right"  to 
revolt  or  regicide.  If  the  ruler  on  his  part  suffers  from 
dynastic  egotism  he  may  talk  familiarly  of  Ich  und  Gott 
or  may  attempt  to  crush  incipient  revolt  by  announcing 
that  he  rules  by  natural  right — the  divine  right  of  kings. 
If  one  objects  to  being  consigned  to  the  Bastille  without 
any  other  warrant  than  a  courtier's  jealousy  he  may 
announce  his  natural  rights  to  life,  liberty,  and  the  pur- 
suit of  happiness.  If  he  is  discontented  with  his  wages 
he  may  claim  by  natural  right  a  living  wage.  If  a  capi- 
talist objects  to  income  taxes  or  legal  limitation  upon 
profits  he  may  appeal  to  his  natural  right  to  make  what 
he  can.  If  a  saloon  or  other  public  nuisance  is  closed  up 
or  destroyed  by  prohibitory  law  its  owner  may  demand 
compensatory  damages  by  natural  right.  Such  cases 
could  be  multiplied  almost  indefinitely.  They  all  suggest 
the  need  of  definition.  What  is  a  right,  a  natural  right, 
an  inaUenable,  imprescriptible  right?  Are  rights  always 
rights?  Are  all  rights  equal  rights?  Is  a  right  in  time 
of  peace  equally  a  right  in  time  of  war?  Are  we  bom 
with  rights  or  do  we  achieve  them?  Is  might  right,  and 
if  so,  whose  might?  Who  or  what  is  the  final  arbiter  of 
rights? 

There  is  scarcely  any  other  field  in  which  human 
opinion  plays  so  fast  and  loose  as  in  this  field  of  rights. 
Not  all  men,  of  course,  are  quite  so  absurd  as  the  student 
who  defined  natural  rights  as  ''the  rights  or  privileges 
which  we  enjoy  after  birth."  Another  student  was  per- 
haps somewhat  nearer  the  truth  in  her  definition  of 
rights  as  "the  things  which  one  man  thinks  he  has  and 
others  think  he  hasn't."  Turgot,  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury French  philosopher-statesman,  saw  the  connection 
between  wants  and  rights  but  failed  to  show  how  the 
connection  really  came  to  be  made.  He  said,  "God  by 
giving  to  man  wants  and  making  his  recourse  to  work 


4  THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

necessary  to  supply  them,  has  made  the  right  to  work 
the  property  of  every  man."  This  is  good  socialism  of 
the  early  type,  but  it  is  poor  sociology  and  savors  of 
creation  by  divine  fiat.  Blackstone's  "  Commentaries  " 
gave  the  legal  definition  of  rights  as  "a  number  of  private 
immunities"  which  are  either,  he  says,  "that  residuum 
of  natural  liberty,  which  is  not  required  by  the  laws  of 
society  to  be  sacrificed  to  public  convenience;  or  else 
those  civil  privileges,  which  society  hath  engaged  to 
provide,  in  lieu  of  the  natural  liberties  so  given  up  by 
individuals."  The  definition  is  sound  so  far  as  it  accounts 
for  rights  in  terms  of  social  expediency;  it  is  fallacious  in 
so  far  as  it  conceives  society  to  be  a  conscious  contract. 
Long  ago  the  theory  of  society  as  conscious  contract 
was  exploded.  We  now  understand  that  society  is 
mental  organization  almost  as  spontaneous  and  uncon- 
scious as  the  growth  of  a  plant  or  animal. 

The  modern  writers  on  politics  and  sociology  have 
struck  pretty  directly  at  the  heart  of  this  matter.  Pro- 
fessor Sumner  declared  that  the  mores  can  make  anything 
right.  This  might  justly  be  paraphrased  into  saying 
that  custom  can  make  any  act  or  function  a  right;  or 
briefly,  customs  make  rights.  In  another  place  Sumner 
says,  "Rights  have  come  to  be  expressions  of  the  rules 
of  the  game  in  the  competition  of  life.  .  .  They  are  not 
absolute.  They  are  not  antecedent  to  civilization.  They 
are  a  product  of  civilization,  or  of  the  art  of  li\'ing  as  men 
have  practiced  it  and  experimented  on  it,  through  the 
whole  course  of  history."  A  great  historian  of  politics 
hits  the  target  even  more  squarely  with  his  definition  of 
a  right  as  "a  power  enforced  by  public  sentiment,"  and 
especially  by  his  comment  that  "a  right  is  really  the 
creation  of  public  sentiment,  past  or  present."  In  his 
own  charming  way  Huxley,  during  his  controversy  with 
General  Booth  and  the  Salvation  Army,  illuminated  this 
whole  problem  of  the  social  creation  of  rights.  "I  cannot 
speak  of  my  own  knowledge,"  he  says,  "but  I  have 


NATURAL  RIGHTS   AITO   SOCIAL  WRONGS  $ 

every  reason  to  believe  that  I  came  into  this  world  a 
small  reddish  person,  certainly  without  a  gold  spoon 
in  my  mouth,  and  in  fact  with  no  discernible  abstract 
or  concrete  'rights'  or  property  of  any  description.  If  a 
foot  was  not,  at  once,  set  upon  me  as  a  squalling  nui- 
sance, it  was  either  the  natural  affection  of  those  about 
me,  which  I  certainly  had  done  nothing  to  deserve,  or 
the  fear  of  the  law  which,  ages  before  my  birth,  was 
painfully  built  up  by  the  society  into  which  I  intruded, 
that  prevented  that  catastrophe.  If  I  was  nourished, 
cared  for,  taught,  saved  from  the  vagabondage  of  a 
wastrel,  I  certainly  am  not  aware  that  I  did  anything  to 
deserve  those  advantages.  And,  if  I  possess  anything 
now,  it  strikes  me  that  though  I  may  have  fairly  earned 
my  day's  wages  for  my  day's  work,  and  may  justly  call 
them  my  property — yet,  without  that  organization  of 
society,  created  out  of  the  toil  and  blood  of  long  gener- 
ations before  my  time,  I  should  probably  have  had 
nothing  but  a  flint  ax  and  an  indifferent  hut  to  call  my 
own;  and  even  those  would  be  mine  only  so  long  as  no 
stronger  savage  came  my  way." 

Now  if  we  summarize  this  conception,  we  may  define 
a  right  as  an  interest  that  has  been  approved,  selected, 
tested,  and  generalized  through  social  experience.  In 
other  words,  society  creates  rights.  Or,  put  in  another 
way,  rights  are  privileges  which  have  the  O.  K.  of  society. 
Rights  are  only  natural  as  society  itself  is  natural.  Since 
rights  grow  out  of  the  exigencies  of  group  life  and  are 
indeed  its  product,  it  is  evident  that  organized  social 
purpose  and  activity  may  abridge,  amend,  or  add  to  the 
existing  sum  of  rights.  Bentham  and  Austin  held  that 
there  could  be  no  such  thing  as  a  right  which  was  inde- 
pendent of  the  State;  but  this  is  not  strictly  true.  The 
State  as  the  most  powerful  form  of  social  organization 
tends  to  become  the  final  arbiter  in  defining  what  is 
right  or  wrong;  yet  at  the  same  time  it  does  not  decide 
in  a  vacuum,  but  rather  upon  the  basis  of  past  expe- 


6  THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

rience  and  proven  or  assumed  expediency.    The  reference 
is  always  to  general  social  experience. 

A  right,  then,  is  a  privilege  conferred  by  society  and 
sanctified  by  expediency.  But  is  a  right  always  a  right? 
Here  we  touch  upon  the  ethical  no  less  than  upon  the 
historical  aspect  of  rights  and  interests.  Phillips  Brooks 
we  remember  said,  ''No  man  has  a  right  to  all  of  his 
rights."  And  the  reason  is  that  some  rights  are  righter— 
that  is,  apparently  more  expedient  than  others;  just 
as  some  interests  are  higher  than  others  when  measured 
by  certain  standards.  The  altruistic  interests  stand 
higher  in  the  culture  scale  of  either  individual  or  group 
than  the  interests  in  sex  or  beefsteaks  or  bridge;  that  is, 
if  we  admit  the  existence  of  such  apparent  facts  as  con- 
science, character,  progress,  humanity.  And  rights 
vary  from  age  to  age  because  wants  and  interests  shift 
or  rise.  Hence  the  conflict  between  conservative  and 
progressive,  standpatter  and  radical.  The  conservative 
insists  upon  maintaining  present  or  past  rights,  present 
comforts.  The  progressive  sees  new  and  wider  interests 
or  rights  in  the  future;  since  for  him  the  good  is  enemy 
of  the  best  he  is  willing  to  forego  and  even  trample  down 
merely  right  rights  for  righter  rights.  He  is  especially 
interested  in  harmonizing  old  interest-conflicts  and  in 
widening  to  the  uttermost  limits  the  participation  of 
every  member  of  a  group  in  the  satisfaction  of  his  legiti- 
mate wants  through  the  proceeds  of  the  common  toil  of 
all.  This  is  the  sum  and  substance  of  the  plea  for  social 
justice. 

This  analysis  makes  it  quite  apparent  that  rights  are 
only  beliefs  about  human  welfare  and  that  they  are  nei-  . 
ther  self-evident  nor  self-justifying  nor  unchanging. 
Individual  rights  are  always  limited  by  contemporary 
questions  of  public  policy  or  by  the  conflict  of  other 
rights.  It  will  probably  scandalize  the  man  in  the  street, 
particularly  the  propertied  man,  to  learn  that  he  has  no 
absolute  natural  right  to  land,  profits,  interest,  or  private 


NATURAL  RIGHTS  AND   SOCIAL  "V^TIONGS  ^ 

property  of  any  sort  and  that  those  so-called  imprescrip- 
tible rights  have  validity  only  in  so  far  as  they  promote 
individual  and  social  well-being.  But  the  moment  you 
attempt  to  handle  political,  economic,  or  international 
problems  with  a  legalistic  mind,  steeped  in  the  doctrine 
of  natural  rights,  you  land  in  confusion,  disaster,  and 
anarchy.  Our  own  social  muddles  and  the  present 
international  catacylsm  will  not  be  settled  upon  the  basis 
of  crude,  absolute  right,  but  on  a  basis  of  livability. 

Granting  that  there  are  no  such  things  as  absolute, 
natural  rights,  there  still  remains  the  problem  of  _  ex- 
tending the  area  of  what  we  believe  to  be  social  utiHty 
and  personal  expansion.  Unmistakably,  many  different 
methods  of  approach  are  possible  in  the  attempt  to  work 
out  what  is  livable,  useful,  and  attainable  through  either 
legislation  or  so-called  case  work  in  the  achieving  of 
these  new  ideals  of  expanding  the  social  spirit.  Not  all 
of  these  methods  are  equally  valuable.  They  range 
all  the  way  from  pure  sentimentality  to  the  delusion  of 
direct  action  and  violence.  In  urging  that  a  constant 
pressure  to  redefine  rights  is  at  the  same  time  a  movement 
to  revise  the  general  concept,  ''humanity,"  one  must 
constantly  be  on  guard  to  discriminate  between  humanity 
and  what  old  Uncle  Everard  Romfrey  called  "humani- 
tomtity. "  That  discrimination  will  appear  in  our  analysis 
of  sentimentaUty.  Likewise,  the  cause  of  human  rights 
is  not  to  be  served  by  indiscriminate  attack.  I  am  re- 
minded here  of  the  EngUsh  schoolboy  who  wrote  in  his 
exammation  paper  that  "All  geometry  begms  with  a 
general  denunciation."  There  are  certain  canons  of 
ommon  decency  and  of  effective  agitation  which  apply 
even  to  a  pseudo-democracy  corrupted  by  yellow  jour- 
nalism. 

Another  form  of  disservice  to  the  social  movement 
for  enlarging  human  rights  is  mere  busybodying.  Ra- 
bmdranath  Tagore  says  somewhere,  "Either  you  have 
work  or  you  have  not.    When  you  have  to  say, '  Let  us 


8  THE   SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT   AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

do  something,'  then  begins  mischief."  It  is  just  this 
attitude  which  has  caused  a  good  many  undiscriminating 
people  to  lump  together  the  real  apostles  of  human  rights 
and  the  mere  camp  follower  or  bushwhacker.  There  are 
also  not  a  few  so-called  reformers  who  thr6ugh  false 
credentials  have  secured  entrance  into  the  lists  of  the 
real  reformers  and  social  workers  but  who  soon  reveal 
themselves  by  their  superficiality  and  their  fads.  I 
struck  a  gathering  of  these  people  not  long  ago  at  a 
congress  devoted  presumably  to  the  subject  of  social 
purity.  Rarely  have  I  seen  such  an  exhibition  of  twaddle 
versus  science,  or  of  meddling  Pharisaism  and  complac- 
ency. Such  men  and  women  are  not  likely  to  do  much 
for  the  enlargement  of  human  freedom. 

There  is  stUl  another  method  of  freeing  men  from  so- 
cial wrongs  and  clothing  them  with  new  rights,  and  that 
is  the  familiar  method  of  direct  action.  The  I.  W.  W.'s 
have  no  priority  rights  nor  patent  upon  this  method  of 
social  reform  by  violence.  Peter  the  Great  stands  as 
one  of  the  great  exponents  of  this  method  of  quick  and 
inexpensive  reform.  After  his  sojourn  in  Germany, 
Holland,  and  England,  we  are  told  that  he  returned  to 
his  capital  convinced  ''beyond  a  shadow  of  doubt  that  the 
one  abiding  error  in  his  country's  ways  was  conserv- 
atism." With  a  good  deal  of  penetration  he  attacked 
the  problem  first  through  externals.  Thus,  on  the  26th 
of  April,  1698,  he  called  together  some  of  his  chief  leaders 
in  a  little  wooden  hut  at  Peobrazhenskoye  and  there  by 
his  own  hand  deliberately  cfipped  off  their  beards  and 
mustaches.  Later,  he  passed  a  series  of  sumptuary  laws 
forbidding  certain  ancient  costumes  and  prescribing  the 
apparel  of  Western  Europe.  That  was  his  method  of 
treating  with  conservatives  when  he  was  faced  with  the 
question  of  redefining  the  rights  of  the  Russian  gentleman. 
And  it  must  be  admitted  that  in  the  heat  of  conflict  over 
a  particular  social  measure,  acts  of  violence  and  sabotage 
frequently  creep  in.    This  was  true  in  Chartism;  it  was 


NATURAL  RIGHTS   AND   SOCIAL  WRONGS  9 

trae  in  the  antislavery  movement;  and  it  has  been  true 
with  certain  wings  of  the  modern  woman-suffrage  party. 
It  is  always  present  as  a  subtle  temptation,  for  to  smash 
a  prime  minister's  window,  or  an  abolitionist's  printing 
press,  or  a  miller's  machinery  always  gives  the  sense  of 
satisfaction  in  quick  and  substantial  achievement.  But 
a  social  worker  or  the  social  reformer  need  not  have  the 
slightest  sympathy  with  such  acts  of  sabotage  and  still 
quaUfy  for  Kirkman  Gray's  definition  as  "the  perfect 
agitator."  His  heart  may  swell  with  sympathy  as  the 
result  of  his  daily  contact  with  grave  social  injustice. 
He  may  be  moved  to  violence  as  a  catharsis  for  his  pent- 
up  feelings.  But  he  must  forego  the  resort  to  such 
crude  methods  if  he  is  to  act  as  the  mediator  between 
the  socially  fortunate  and  the  socially  neglected.  Such 
work  of  mediation  demands  that  one's  sense  of  perspec- 
tive and  one's  clear  vision  of  relative  values  must  remain 
imobscured.  To  see  red  either  chronically  or  spasmodi- 
cally is  not  likely  to  make  one  a  safe  apostle  of  human 
rights. 

The  new  "bill  of  rights"  as  fully  enacted  or  in  the 
process  of  enactment  during  the  last  hundred  and  fifty 
years  is  a  very  impressive  sight.  The  right  to  freedom 
is  perhaps  the  most  outstanding  of  these  new  attempts 
to  redefine  human  rights;  and  I  mean  by  that  term  not 
only  the  abolition  of  negro  slavery,  but  also  the  move- 
ments to  abolish  serfdom  and  peonage,  white  slavery, 
convict  slavery,  and  wage  slavery.  These  are  all  angles 
of  the  same  fundamental  human  problem.  A  very  con- 
siderable proportion  of  social  energies  during  the  latter 
half  of  the  eighteenth  and  throughout  the  nineteenth 
century  have  been  poured  into  channels  leading  toward 
the  accomplishment  of  this  vision  of  a  freer  human 
personality. 

As  a  corollary  to  the  right  of  personal  freedom  men 
have  added  the  right  to  a  decent  income.  You  find  this 
in  the  form  frequently  of  a  demand  for  a  living  wage. 


lO  THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND    SOCIAL  WORK 

Minimum-wage  legislation  for  women  and  children  has 
already  met  in  part  this  demand.  But  there  is  a  growing 
call  for  a  widening  of  the  concept  to  include  all  workers, 
men  as  well  as  women,  unorganized  as  well  as  organized. 
The  new  demand  made  orignally  by  the  Fabian  Society 
in  England  and  taken  up  by  the  British  Labor  Party's 
program  for  social  reconstruction  after  the  war  with  its 
echoes  at  the  National  Conference  of  Social  Work  in 
19 18  has  crystallized  pretty  definitely  into  what  is  called 
now  the  "platform  of  national  minimums";  that  is, 
certain  minimum  standards  of  health,  wages,  and  other 
living  conditions  as  they  affect  citizenship.  It  is  a  very 
fertile  concept,  and  it  proves  conclusively  the  real  nature 
of  rights.  It  shows  beyond  question  how  these  rights 
arise  in  localized  opinion,  are  fostered  through  agitation, 
and  are  finally  crystallized  in  popular  conviction  as 
expressed  in  constitutional  amendments  and  statutory 
legislation. 

Another  significant  corollary  to  the  right  of  freedom 
is  the  right  to  organize  for  economic  protection.  The 
answer  to  this  right  is  of  course  the  whole  trades-union 
movement  with  its  gradual  compelling  of  courts  and 
legislatures  to  cast  overboard  the  old  doctrines  of  con- 
spiracy and  to  recognize  the  right  of  peaceable  assem- 
blage, protest,  and  wage  bargaining.  How  long  this 
right  is  to  be  pressed  will  depend  upon  how  long  the 
possibility  of  exploitation  lingers  on  in  our  industrial 
organization. 

Another  fundamental  right  now  becoming  more  and 
more  recognized  is  the  right  to  leisure.  This  is  based 
partly  upon  a  perception  that  all  advances  in  human 
culture  have  been  made  through  leisure-time  activities. 
It  is  also  based  upon  the  complementary  fact  that  men 
can  remain  neither  healthy  individuals,  sound  parents, 
nor  good  citizens  unless  they  have  proper  time  for  rest 
and  recuperation.  The  social  reforms  to  meet  this  newly 
demanded  right  are  to  be  found  in  labor-union  agitation, 


NATURAL   RIGHTS   AND   SOCIAL  WRONGS  II 

in  legislative  acts  and  judicial  decisions  limiting  the 
hours  of  the  working  day.  The  greatest  single  monument 
in  this  field  is  the  famous  brief  presented  by  Mr.  Justice 
Brandeis  and  Miss  Goldmark  in  the  so-called  Oregon 
Eight-hour  Case,  Bunting  vs.  The  State  of  Oregon.  The 
"Pittsburgh  Survey"  offered  a  startling  backgroimd 
against  which  to  sketch  in  the  need  for  adding  this  par- 
ticular right  to  the  social  equipment  of  every  normal 
individual.  Not  even  the  war  and  its  preoccupation 
with  intense  industrial  activity  was  able  to  set  aside  the 
conviction  of  the  right  of  this  demand  for  leisure.  In- 
deed, it  has  been  officially  recognized  in  the  notable 
series  of  studies  upon  fatigue  in  British  munition  plants. 
A  decent  working  day  and  various  forms  of  welfare  and 
recreational  work  have  been  the  war-time  concessions 
to  this  insistent  demand. 

The  right  to  education  stands  perhaps  only  second 
to  the  right  to  freedom  in  the  great  nineteenth  century 
bill  of  rights.  The  enlargement  and  extension  of  systems 
of  universal  free  public  education,  the  creation  of  the 
public  schools,  elementary,  intermediate,  high,  and 
university,  with  all  their  accessories,  indicate  how  keenly 
the  justice  and  the  utility  of  this  right  have  been  per- 
ceived. But  that  this  is  not  a  natural  right  was  clearly 
indicated  in  the  arguments  of  English  conservatives  as 
late  as  1870  in  favor  of  retaining  education  as  a  private 
industry  and  against  a  state  monopoly  of  the  field. 

As  a  connecting  link  between  the  right  to  education 
and  the  right  to  leisure  stands  the  new  right  to  recreation. 
This  right  is  fundamentally  a  recognition  of  the  imperious 
character  of  the  play  instinct,  and  an  understanding 
that  if  this  instinct  is  balked  of  legitimate  satisfaction 
it  will  find  its  satisfaction  in  devious  ways.  The  answer 
to  this  demand  is  found  in  the  creation  of  public  play- 
grounds, parks,  municipal  theaters,  concerts,  boys'  and 
girls'  clubs,  settlements  and  social  centers.  The  war  has 
given  an  opportunity  to  demonstrate  on  a  tremendous 


12  THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

scale  the  value  of  learning  through  decent  organized 
recreation  how  really  to  "play  the  game."  It  has  been 
said  frequently  that  the  fundamental  difference  in  mental 
attitude  between  the  German  and  the  American  is  that 
the  German  does  not  know  how  "to  play  the  game" 
because  he  has  never  fully  perceived  that  this  right  to 
recreation  was  a  community  obUgation. 

Another  whole  series  of  new  rights  created  by  nine- 
teenth century  social  perception  may  be  united  under 
the  term  "  the  right  to  health."  I  mean  by  this  not  only 
the  right  to  pubhc  sanitation  and  the  right  to  preventive 
hygiene,  but  also  the  right  to  protection  from  impure  and 
adulterated  foods.  Many  of  these  aspects  of  the  problem 
were  gathered  by  Mrs.  Florence  Kelley  in  her  excellent 
little  book,  "Some  Ethical  Gains  Through  Legislation." 
But  there  are  other  health  rights  equally  important. 
One  of  these  in  particular  has  been  receiving  increasing 
attention  for  at  least  half  a  century;  namely,  "the  right 
to  a  decent  habitation."  This  right  is  by  no  means 
fully  won,  for  altogether  too  many  people  still  think 
that  if  a  person  cannot  afford  to  live  in  anything  but  a 
chicken  house  or  a  basement,  it  is  nobody's  business. 
We  are  learning  that  there  is  a  level  of  housing  decency 
below  which  no  citizen,  whatever  his  rank,  shall  be  al- 
lowed to  drop.  This  applies  not  only  to  private  homes 
but  also  to  joint  houses,  to  tenements,  to  industrial 
camps, to  lodging  houses,  hotels,  prisons,  and  other  pub- 
licinstitutions.  Here  again  the  war  has  strengthened  the 
position  of  the  social  workers  and  the  housing  reformers 
and  has  made  it  pretty  clear  that  this  fundamental 
right  stands  a  good  chance  of  attaining  a  permanent 
position  in  any  bill  of  fundamental  human  rights. 

We  may  consider  just  one  more  angle  of  the  right  to 
health.  It  might  be  phrased  as  "the  right  of  children  to 
a  chance  to  start  Hfe  right."  That  is,  the  right  of  chil- 
dren to  a  clean  bill  of  health,  to  a  parentage  untainted 
by  uimecessary  and  preventable  diseases  or  degenera- 


NATURAL  RIGHTS  AND   SOCIAL  WRONGS  1 3 

cies.  It  is  this  right  to  which  at  least  a  part  of  the  modem 
eugenics  movement  addresses  itself.  But  along  with 
eugenics,  of  course,  are  to  be  marshaled  all  sorts  of  agen- 
cies from  the  Federal  government  down  to  the  local 
home-finding  society  which  are  working  for  the  protec- 
tion and  welfare  of  children.  The  Federal  government 
with  its  Children's  Year  program  in  19 18  illustrated  very 
clearly  the  perception  of  this  right  and  also  the  realiza- 
tion that  it  is  not  a  negligible  part  of  the  citizen's  pro- 
tective code  but  rather  that  it  is  a  fundamental  part  of 
this  supremely  important  right  to  health. 

The  history  of  the  nineteenth  century  with  its  reform 
of  poor  law  administration,  with  its  various  movements 
to  abolish  imprisonment  for  debt,  to  introduce  the  re- 
formatory spirit  into  the  prison  system,  to  abolish  cap- 
ital punishment,  and  to  provide  more  rationally  for  the 
care  of  delinquent  children  indicates  a  growing  tendency 
to  impute  to  the  delinquent  the  right  to  a  certain  min- 
imum of  decent  care.  The  point  is  not  that  the  criminal 
is  any  less  crimmal  than  he  used  to  be,  nor  any  less 
deserving  of  all  discipline  and  punishment,  but  that  the 
commimity  is  too  good,  too  prosperous,  and  too  right- 
minded  to  tolerate  anything  less  than  a  really  humane 
ideal.  The  State  as  an  evolved  and  civilized  social 
institution  cannot  afford  to  indulge  in  the  crude,  prim- 
itive methods  of  torture  and  revenge;  and  just  as  it  has 
outgrown  through  its  ver}'-  decency  and  its  development 
those  primal  brutalities,  so  it  tends  to  go  a  step  further 
and  establish  certaui  new  standards  of  positive  decency 
in  its  methods  of  reclaiming  "human  scrap." 

Somewhat  the  same  situation  is  involved  in  the  treat- 
ment of  the  poor,  particularly  through  public  adminis- 
tration. It  is  quite  arguable,  of  course,  that  the  poor, 
even  the  so-called  unworthy  poor,  are  just  as  shiftless 
and  wastrel  as  they  were  in  the  days  of  Elizabeth.  But 
here  again  the  point  is  that  the  whole  level  of  our  stand- 
ard of  decency  has  risen  measurably  in  the  last  three  or 


14  THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

four  centuries,  and  that  we  cannot  tolerate  from  either 
public  or  private  authorities  any  standard  of  treatment  of 
any  class  whatsoever  which  is  out  of  keeping  with  our 
minimum  ideal  of  what  any  human  creature  should  re- 
ceive. This  tendency  to  accord  to  the  poor  the  right  not 
only  to  relief  but  to  decent  relief  with  an  ever  rising 
standard  of  decency,  accounts  for  the  often  noted  fact 
that  while  the  number  of  the  poor  apparently  decreases, 
the  cost  of  maintaining  them  does  not  always  decrease 
but  rather  tends  to  rise. 

One  of  the  most  significant  extensions  of  human  rights 
which  we  have  been  witnessing,  particularly  in  the  last 
twenty  or  thirty  years,  is  the  recognition  of  the  right  of 
women  to  full  equality  in  all  social  life.  This  appears 
in  various  guises.  You  meet  it  in  that  broad  current  of 
mixed  motives  and  purposes  sometimes  called  feminism; 
you  find  it  in  the  organized  suffrage  movement;  you  find 
it  in  the  women's  trade-union  league;  you  find  it  most 
recently  in  the  various  methods  by  wWch  women  have 
thrown  themselves  into  war  service.  No  better  illustra- 
tion could  be  offered  than  the  woman's  movement  of  how 
a  right,  no  matter  how  "natural"  it  may  be,  has  to  be 
achieved  through  agitation,  education,  and  the  production 
of  an  irresistible  conviction  that  the  extension  of  such  a 
privilege  is  essential  to  the  highest  social  welfare.  It  also 
illustrates  the  same  thing  from  another  standpoint, 
namely,  that  many  people  are  anxious  to  concede  this 
right  to  women  in  order  to  be  at  peace  and  in  order  that 
the  restless  energies  of  women  now  absorbed  in  winning 
suffrage  and  other  forms  of  recognition  may  be  poured 
into  channels  for  constructive  social  effort. 

I  have  been  speaking  so  far  mainly  of  individual  rights, 
the  rights  of  the  citizen.  But  there  has  been  also  a 
tendency  to  enlarge  a  concept  of  the  rights  of  the  com- 
munity, which  we  are  learning  to  recognize  under  such 
terms  as  social  control,  the  police  power  of  the  State,  the 
social-welfare  function  of  government,  and  the  commu- 


NATURAL  RIGHTS   AND   SOCIAL  WRONGS        .       IS 

nity  right  to  self-protection.  It  is  implicit  also  in  such 
ideas  and  movements  as  eugenics  and  conservation.  For 
example,  various  voices  arise  from  time  to  time  asserting 
the  right  of  the  community  to  protect  itself  against 
criminals  and  defectives  by  cutting  them  off  through 
segregation,  birth  control,  sterilization,  and  other  forms 
of  negative  eugenics.  These  suggestions  have  not  yet 
taken  full  form  as  community  rights,  and  the  reason  is, 
we  say,  because  public  opinion  has  not  yet  crystallized 
itself  fully  in  their  favor.  This  illustrates  clearly  both 
the  twilight  zones  from  which  all  rights  emerge  and  also 
the  method  by  which  they  are  brought  from  twilight 
into  full  sunlight. 

A  very  remarkable  extension  of  the  right  of  the  coin- 
munity  through  its  inherent  police  power  may  be  seen  in 
various  legislative,  judicial,  and  executive  acts  to  pre- 
vent poverty,  disease,  and  crime  through  prohibiting 
certain  harmful  agencies  like  the  saloon,  the  house  of 
prostitution,  lotteries,  race-track  gambling,  the  sale  of 
habit-forming  drugs,  and  patent  medicines.  So  thor- 
oughly is  this  sense  of  right  becommg  ingrained  in  the 
public  mind  that  only  here  and  there  does  one  hear  any 
longer  of  compensation  for  destroying  any  of  these  nox- 
ious busmesses.  This  idea  of  the  abatement  of  public 
nuisances  bids  fair  to  have  a  wide  extension.  ^  Some  of 
the  more  positive  aspects  of  this  police  power  will  appear 
in  more  strikmg  and  detailed  form  in  a  later  chapter  on 
the  trend  of  social  reform.  . 

Finally  there  is  a  tendency  to  a  very  much  broader^ 
and  more  comprehensive  framing  of  community  rights 
which  is  attaming  a  wider  and  wider  public  interest.  We 
might  put  this  down  as  the  right  of  the  community, 
present  and  future,  to  an  imimpaired  heritage  of  healthy 
citizens  and  of  a  productive  domain.  From  one  stand- 
point, this  right  summarizes  all  other  rights  both  indi- 
vidual and  social,  and  in  a  sense  may  be  said  to  epitomize 
the  whole  of  rational  social  policy.    May  the  day  soon 


l6  THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT  AND  SOCIAL  WORK 

come  when  these  rights  will  not  be  mere  words  nor  mere 
laws  falling  into  desuetude,  but  when  they  may  form  the 
charter  of  our  liberties  and  when  they  may  become  the 
sohd  basis  upon  which  a  finer  superstructure  of  civiliza- 
tion may  be  erected.  Meanwhile,  let  them  serve  as 
lighthouses  for  the  social  worker  as  he  steers  his  course 
through  the  troubled  currents  of  modern  social  life. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  PHILOSOPHY   OF   SOCIAL  BETTERMENT 

To  round  out  an  adequate  concept  of  "rights"  and  to 
smooth  the  approach  to  a  scientific  view  of  social  work 
it  is  necessary  to  formulate  a  more  coherent  philosophy 
of  social  betterment.  This  involves  primarily  a  brief  re- 
view of  some  theories  of  the  relation  of  the  individual  to 
the  social  group.  Thus  only  can  we  arrive  at  the  basic 
sanctions  for  social-welfare  activity  or  assess  responsibil- 
ity for  its  costs  and  conduct. 

It  is  doubtful  if  any  of  us  are  still  such  outrageous 
optimists  as  to  argue  for  the  present  world  as  the  best 
possible  of  all  possible  good  worlds.  Our  common  sense 
and  our  scientific  analysis  agree  that  there  is  room  for 
improvement.  But  as  to  who  or  what  needs  improve- 
ment or  who  should  make  it,  or  whether  it  makes  itself 
by  an  inevitable  tendency  to  perfection,  there  may  be 
considerable  divergence  of  conviction.  Personally  I  am 
unable  to  rest  my  faith  in  the  perfectionist  doctrines  of 
eighteenth-century  Turgot  and  Condorcet  or  their  nine- 
teenth-century representatives,  Bachofen  and  Werge- 
land  and  Pelletan.  Man  has  no  incorrigible  hankering 
after  perfection,  nor  is  he  guided  in  the  direction  of  im- 
provement by  an  irresistible  force,  as  the  spirit  is  supposed 
to  impel  the  hand  of  a  medium  at  a  seance  or  direct  the 
scribe  in  literal  dictation  of  inspired  scriptures.  Man 
wills  to  improve  when  he  wants  to  improve.  Progress  is 
voluntary  after  we  leave  certain  low  levels  of  culture. 
Social  betterment,  then,  is  not  something  imposed  by 
Powers  above,  but  an  attitude  of  human  minds,  senti- 
ments, and  wills. 

17 


1 8  THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

We  are  speaking  here  of  social  betterment,  not  individ- 
ual improvement,  though  the  process  in  either  case  is 
identical.  But  who  is  charged  with  social  improvement? 
Is  it  everybody's  business,  or  that  of  kings,  priests,  coun- 
cils, and  legislatures?  Is  it  something  savoring  of  uni- 
versal duty,  or  is  it  merely  a  luxury  to  be  enjoyed  by  a 
favored  few,  as  leisure,  wealth,  or  whim  suggest?  The 
answers  to  these  questions  range  themselves  into  two 
pretty  clearly  marked  groups  which  we  have  got  into  the 
habit  of  calling  respectively  individualism,  and  altruism 
or  mutualism.  On  the  one  hand  we  have,  say,  Sumner's 
essays  on  "What  Social  Classes  Owe  to  Each  Other," 
with  their  general  text  that  "to  mind  one's  own  business 
is  a  purely  negative  and  unproductive  injunction,  but, 
taking  social  matters  as  they  are  just  now,  it  is  a  sociolog- 
ical principle  of  the  first  importance.  There  might  be 
developed  a  grand  philosophy  on  the  basis  of  minding 
one's  own  business."  Or  we  might  turn  to  Max  Stirner, 
the  most  uncompromising  individualist  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  in  his  "The  Ego  and  His  Own."  "Thousands  of 
years  of  civilization,"  he  declares,  "have  obscured  to  you 
what  you  are,  have  made  you  believe  you  are  not  egoists 
but  are  called  to  be  idealists  ('  good  men  ') .  Shake  that 
off!  Do  not  seek  for  freedom,  which  does  precisely  de- 
prive you  of  yourselves,  in  *  self-denial; '  but  seek 
yourselves,  become  egoists,  become  each  of  you  an  almighty 
ego  .  .  .  if  the  State  is  a  society  of  men,  not  a  union  of 
egos  each  of  whom  has  only  himself  before  his  eyes,  then 
it  cannot  last  without  morality,  and  must  insist  upon 
morality.  Therefore  we  two,  the  State  and  I,  are  enemies. 
I,  the  egoist,  have  not  at  heart  the  welfare  of  this  '  human 
society,'  I  sacrifice  nothing  to  it,  I  only  utilize  it;  but  to 
be  able  to  utilize  it  completely  I  transform  it  rather  into 
my  property  and  my  creature, — i.  e.,  I  annihilate  it, 
and  form  in  its  place  the  Union  of  Egoists.^' 

On  the  other  hand,  we  are  met  with  Comte  and  his 
sociology  culminating  in  the  religion  of  humanity;  with 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  SOCIAL  BETTERMENT  1 9 

the  philosophy  of  solidarity  which  characterizes  the 
France  of  the  Third  Republic;  with  State  Socialism; 
with  such  books  as  Dr.  McCoimell's  "Duty  of  Altruism  " 
or  with  that  whole  more  or  less  vague  and  spontaneous 
body  of  attempts  to  formulate  and  utilize  good  will 
which  we  may  call  social-welfare  movements.  Let  me 
illustrate  with  a  handful  of  maxims  from  Auguste  Comte's 
writings.  ''The  perpetual  aim  of  human  life:  the  main- 
tenance and  improvement  of  the  Great  Being,  whom  we 
must  at  once  love,  know,  and  serve."  ''Devotion  of  the 
Strong  to  the  Weak,  Respect  from  the  Weak  for  the 
Strong."  "The  whole  human  problem  consists  in  es- 
tablishing Unity,  personal  and  social,  by  the  constant 
subordination  of  selfishness  to  Altruism."  "With  all 
our  efforts,  the  longest  life  well  employed  will  never 
enable  us  to  pay  back  more  than  an  imperceptible  part 
of  what  we  have  received."  "The  Education  of  the 
Race,  like  that  of  the  individual,  prepares  us  gradually 
to  Live  for  Others."  "The  characteristic  of  Education 
is  this,  above  all:  a  Being  naturally  inclined  to  live  for 
self  and  in  self  is  to  be  made  disposed  to  live  for  others 
so  as  to  live  again  in  others  by  others." 

This  is  of  course  the  age-old  philosophical  problem  of 
the  One  and  the  Many;  stated  in  its  newer  form  it  is  the 
question  of  the  relation  of  the  individual  to  society.  The 
attempt  to  harmonize  these  two  presumed  opposites  is, 
I  believe,  the  essence  of  the  "social  question."  And  if 
we  agree  that  this  is  "the  age  of  the  social  question,"  it 
is  because  the  age  is  striving  to  reconcile  the  interests  of 
individual  and  group.  But  can  they  be  reconciled?  Is 
the  proposition  as  definite  as  a  problem  in  arithmetic, 
with  only  one  valid  solution?  You  remember  that  even 
in  arithmetic  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  found  much  to  be 
said  on  both  sides.  And  there  is  the  story  of  a  Yale  pro- 
fessor with  the  proper  academic  open  mind  who  was 
stating  the  evidence  for  the  existence  of  God.  Some 
persons,  he  said,  hold  that  the  Divine  Being  exists; 


20  THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

others,  that  He  does  not;  the  truth  lies  halfway  between. 
But  can  the  truth  about  the  individual  and  society  be 
stated  in  this  catholic  way?  Let  us  see  first  whether  the 
two  terms  are  really  in  opposition.  It  may  be  that  the 
problem  is  improperly  framed  and  that  we  are  forcing 
doors  that  are  already  open.  This  will  involve  defin- 
ing what  we  mean  by  "individual"  and  "  social"  or 
"society." 

Suppose  we  begin  by  saying  dogmatically  that  there 
is  no  real  opposition  between  individual  and  society;  but 
that  both  words  represent  different  aspects  of  the  same 
thing.  Is  the  individual  created  primarily  for  society, 
or  society  for  the  individual?  Neither.  Which  is  prior  in 
time  or  importance?  Again  neither.  Like  the  "halves" 
in  Plato's  Symposium  they  are  complementary  and 
indispensable  to  each  other.  They  are  the  same  thing. 
They  are  merely  two  of  the  perhaps  many  modes  in 
which  the  creative  impulse  has  chosen  to  express  itself — 
both  equally  vaUd  and  equally  useful.  Bergson  in  his 
"Creative  Evolution"  has  stated  this  matter  compre- 
hensively, and  since  we  are  discussuig  philosophy,  it  may 
be  permissible  to  quote  him:  "A  part  is  no  sooner  de- 
tached than  it  tends  to  reunite  itself,  if  not  to  all  the  rest, 
at  least  to  what  is  nearest  to  it.  Hence,  throughout  the 
whole  realm  of  Hfe  a  balancing  between  individuation 
and  association.  Individuals  join  together  into  society; 
but  the  society,  as  soon  as  formed,  tends  to  melt  the 
associated  individuals  into  a  new  organism,  so  as  to  be- 
come itself  an  individual,  able  in  its  turn  to  be  part  and 
parcel  of  a  new  association.  .  .  But  this  itself  (speaking 
of  polyzoism  in  lower  animals)  reveals  to  us,  in  the  gene- 
sis of  the  individual,  a  haunting  of  the  social  form,  as  if 
the  individual  could  develop  only  on  the  condition  that 
its  substance  should  be  split  up  into  elements  having 
themselves  an  appearance  of  individuahty  and  united 
among  themselves  by  an  appearance  of  sociality.  There 
are  numerous  cases  in  which  Nature  seems  to  hesitate 


THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   SOCIAL  BETTERMENT  21 

between  the  two  forms,  and  to  ask  herself  if  she  shall 
make  a  society  or  an  individual.  The  slightest  push  is 
enough,  then,  to  make  the  balance  weigh  on  one  side  or 
the  other.  .  .  The  evolution  of  hfe  in  the  double  direc- 
tion of  individuality  and  association  has  therefore  noth- 
ing accidental  about  it;  it  is  due  to  the  very  nature  of 
life."  ^ 

As  I  have  shown  elsewhere  ,2  in  human  society  nature 
seems  to  have  solved  the  puzzle  by  creating  the  individ- 
ual's real  self  out  of  the  stuff  of  society,  and  on  the  other 
hand  to  have  trusted  to  variations  in  the  individual  for 
the  constant  renewing  and  freshening  of  the  social  mass. 

So  far  as  I  am  able  to  make  out  the  philosophical  in- 
dividualist's position,  it  is  something  like  this:  I  am  cre- 
ated different  from  everything  else,  I  am  individual, 
unique,  inexplicable.  By  the  law  of  nature  I  am  per- 
mitted, even  required,  to  magnify  and  perfect  that  dif- 
ference, my  own  unique  nature.  Hence  I  invoke  a  com- 
bination of  the  scientific  doctrine  of  selection  of  favorable 
variations  ^vith  the  metaphysical  doctrine  of  natural 
rights;  by  virtue  of  this  combination,  I  myself,  the  unique 
variation,  am  constituted  the  selector.  The  position  of 
the  individualist  appears  then  to  be  an  unwarrantable 
extension  of  the  eudonomic  theory  of  divergent  evolu- 
tion, i.  e.  the  inherent  power  in  different  individuals  of  the 
same  species  to  deal  in  different  ways  with  the  same  en- 
vironment. 

On  the  other  side  of  what  seems  to  be  at  first  view  an 
impassable  gulf  appear  a  great  body  of  scientists  who 
utterly  repudiate  such  an  individualistic  conception  of 
human  nature.  The  social  psychologists,  Tarde,  Durk- 
heim.  Trotter,  MacDougall,  Baldwin,  Cooley,  Thorsch, 
Boodin — indeed  nearly  every  sociologist  and  all  the  phi- 
losophers who  have  taken  the  trouble  to  investigate  social 

^  "  Creative  Evolution,"  pp.  251-252. 

^  "Theories  of  Social  Progress,"  Chap.  IV. 


22  THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

processes — find  the  individual  born  of  society,  caught  in 
its  matrix,  as  much  in  and  of  it  as  though  he  were  a  drop 
of  water  in  the  Gulf  Stream.  Professor  Cooley  states 
the  situation  very  clearly:  "To  many  people  it  would 
seem  mystical  to  say  that  persons,  as  we  know  them,  are 
not  separable  and  mutually  exclusive,  like  physical  bodies, 
so  that  what  is  part  of  one  cannot  be  part  of  another,  but 
that  they  interpenetrate  one  another,  the  same  element 
pertaining  to  different  persons  at  different  times,  or  even 
at  the  same  time:  yet  this  is  a  verifiable  and  not  very 
abstruse  fact.  .  .  Man's  psychical  outfit  is  not  divisible 
into  the  social  and  the  non-social  .  .  .  he  is  all  social  in  a 
large  sense,  is  a  part  of  the  common  human  life."  ^ 

The  so-called  "organic"  school  of  social  theorists  put 
the  matter  much  more  positively.  In  their  hands  the 
individual  is  a  mere  biological  atom,  a  bit  of  social  proto- 
plasm with  no  more  and  no  less  independence  than  a  cell 
in  a  jellyfish.  This  far  I  cannot  follow,  for  society  is 
really  mental  unity,  mental  organization  rather  than  a 
biological  organism.  But  no  social  worker  need  hesitate 
to  go  at  least  as  far  as  certain  clear-sighted  health 
workers,  and  he  dare  not  hold  back  behind  them.  Let  him 
go  to  Milan  and  visit  the  famous  clinic  for  occupational 
diseases:  he  will  find  his  true  philosophy  cut  in  stone,  for 
the  corner  stone  of  that  clinic  bears  this  motto,  "In  aliis 
vivimus,  movemur,  et  sumus."  In  others  we  live,  move, 
and  have  our  being.  Or  let  him  read  Witter  Bynner's 
"The  New  World"  for  a  somewhat  mystical  render- 
ing of  the  same  philosophy  in  noble  verse.  Or  let  him 
listen  to  old  Walt  Whitman  roll  out  his  "For  You,  O 
Democracy": 

"Come,  I  will  make  the  continent  indissoluble 

I  will  make  divine  magnetic  lands, 
With  the  love  of  comrades, 
With  the  lifelong  love  of  comrades. 

*  "Hmnan  Nature  and  the  Social  Order,"  pp.  12,  61,  90-1. 


THE   PHILOSOPHY  OF   SOCIAL  BETTERMENT  23 

I  will  plant  companionship  thick  as 

trees  all  along  the  rivers  of  America, 
and  along  the  shores  of  the  great 
lakes,  and  aU  over  the  prairie* 

I  wUl  make  inseparable  cities  with  their  arms 
about  each  other's  necks, 
By  the  love  of  comrades  , 
By  the  manly  love  of  comrades." 

It  is  now  time  to  clear  up  our  definitions.  In  the  first 
place  both  individual  and  society  are  abstractions.  Soc- 
rates offered  his  weeping  friends  the  prospect  of  a  merry 
race  in  their  search  for  him,  the  real  Socrates,  who  to  mor- 
Val  appearance  was  about  to  be  killed.  Likewise  if  you 
go  on  the  still  hunt  for  the  individual  you  are  fore- 
doomed to  illusion  and  disappointment.  You  will  dis- 
cover that  the  individual  is  only  a  convention,  a  concept. 
Put  him  under  the  microscope  and  you  will  melt  him 
away  into  an  infinitude  of  molecules  or  atoms  that  are 
dancing  about  with  partner  molecules  or  atoms  from  the 
air,  the  earth,  or  other  living  creatures.  Analyze  his  mind, 
his  self,  and  you  will  find  that  there  is  no  inchvidual  there 
but  only  a  multitude  of  potential  individuals  held  to- 
gether by  the  exigencies  of  the  moment.  Analyze  again 
those  potential  individuals  and  you  will  find  them  to  be 
strikingly  like  ideas  and  potential  selves  you  have  met 
before.  You  will  conclude  that  your  individual,  like 
Ulysses,  is  part  of  all  that  he  has  met.  You  will  find 
that  he  is  individual  in  the  morphological  sense;  for  in- 
stance, he  will  have  a  set  of  finger  prints  quite  unique. 
But  I  am  sure  you  will  not  be  content  with  the  definition 
worked  out  a  while  ago,  that  the  individual  is  merely 
"the  detached  and  solitary  human  monad  hermeti- 
cally sealed  in  two  hundred  pounds  of  acquisitive  avoir- 
dupois." You  will  refuse  to  define  him  in  anything  but 
really  human  terms.  You  will  find  that  your  individual 
is  a  composite  mixture  of  his  mother's  body,  his  father's 


24  THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

temper,  his  grandfather's  love  of  horses,  his  brother's  re- 
sentment at  having  the  bedclothes  pulled  off,  his  nurse- 
maid's fear  of  ghosts,  his  teacher's  love  of  polished  shoes, 
his  gang's  predilection  for  running  when  a  poHceman 
appears,  the  American  youth's  tendency  to  overdress 
and  to  drop  the  ing  from  his  participles,  the  business 
man's  philosophy  of  success,  the  preacher's  fear  of  hell, 
and  the  saint's  vision  of  heavenly  glory.  His  language, 
his  ideas,  his  standards  of  Hving,  his  codes  of  honor,  his 
whole  outlook  upon  life  are  borrowed;  they  are  in  no 
sense  native,  they  are  every  one  acquired;  and  they  are 
what  make  him  man,  an  individual  man.  We  call  him 
an  mdividual  man  by  courtesy.  If  he  insists  that  he  is 
an  irreducible,  unique  center  of  acquisition,  we  deny  him 
even  that  dubious  right;  we  show  him  that  he  is  simply 
a  bundle  of  cells  which  are  hungry,  and  a  congeries  of 
ideas  that  think  and  move.     He  is  merely  a  convention. 

If  he  calls  evolutionary  zoology  to  witness,  we  can 
show  him  that  natural  selection  chooses  species,  not 
individuals.  From  the  standpoint  of  human  evolution 
it  is  significant  that  it  was  not  the  gorilla  living  more  or 
less  apart,  but  his  much  weaker  cousin,  the  social  monkey, 
that  was  elected  to  so  honored  a  position  in  our  genealogy. 
On  every  hand  you  find  evidences  of  social  soHdarity  in 
the  sub-human  world.  "Not  only  are  species  interde- 
pendent as  well  as  partly  in  competition,  iDut  there  is  an 
absolute  dependence  in  all  ihe  higher  species  between  its 
different  members  which  may  be  said  to  imply  a  de  facto 
altruism,  as  the  dependence  upon  other  species  implies 
a  de  facto  cooperation.  Every  animal,  to  say  nothing 
else,  is  absolutely  dependent  for  a  considerable  part  of 
its  existence  upon  its  parents."  ^ 

Moreover,  every  higher  species  has  certain  so-called 
race  instincts  that  have  apparently  nothing  to  do  with 
the  life  or  welfare  of  the  individual.     Indeed  they  are 

^  Leslie  Stephen,  "  Social  Rights  and  Duties,"  Vol.  I,  p.  234. 


THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   SOCIAL  BETTERMENT  2$ 

only  intelligible  when  translated  into  terms  of  group  in- 
terests. Such  are  the  mating  or  the  parental  instinct, 
and  the  impulse  to  rush  to  the  defense  of  comrades  or  the 
weak  and  helpless.  We  might  add,  too,  such  a  strongly 
marked  instinct  as  the  impulse  to  toss  alms  to  every 
beggar.  I  should  not  want  to  be  misunderstood  as  basing 
rational  and  advanced  civilization  upon  mere  group  in- 
stincts; far  from  that.  But  these  illustrations  go  to  show 
at  least  that  society  is  not,  nor  never  was,  a  free  contract 
between  separate  human  monads  endowed  with  a  full 
equipment  of  natural  rights.  Let  us  reiterate  now  that 
from  the  evolutionary  point  of  view  human  rights  or  the 
rights  of  the  individual  are  not  rights  at  all  but  rather 
social  privileges,  arising  out  of,  and  sanctified  by,  group 
experience  and  conferred  by  the  group  for  its  own  wel- 
fare. TJte  individual  is  not,  then,  a  natural  product;  he  is 
a  product  of  civilization;  and  civilization  is  social  achieve- 
ment. 

But  the  individualist  may  refuse  to  rest  his  case  upon 
natural  science  and  evolution.  He  may  insist  that  how- 
ever naturalistic  sociology  may  strive  to  identify  the 
individual  with  the  group,  religion  disengages  the  individ- 
ual and  makes  the  unit  soul  the  end  and  aim  of  creation. 
But  at  best  the  evidence  from  religion  is  conflicting. 
Totemism,  the  ancestor  cult,  reincarnation,  and  group 
responsibility  for  sin  are  the  prevailing  marks  of  primi- 
tive religion.  The  first  gods  were  group  gods.  And  God 
is  still  accused  of  scourging  whole  communities  for  the 
misdeeds  of  certain  of  their  members.  Christianity,  it 
is  true,  summons  men  to  the  care  of  their  own  priceless 
inalienable,  individual  souls.  "What  shall  a  man  give  in 
exchange  for  his  soul?  "  {Mark  viii,  36) .  Here  is  extreme, 
irreducible,  individualism.  Its  flower  came  in  subject- 
ivism, the  right  of  private  judgment  espoused  by  the 
Protestant  Reformation;  and  its  seed,  the  multiplicity  of 
Christian  sects  which  the  modern  idea  of  federation  is 
trying  to  weld  once  more  into  a  coherent  mass.    But  in 


26  THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

spite  of  this  fact  I  believe  we  may  say  that  the  most 
original  and  engaging  idea  of  Christianity  was  not  the 
value  of  the  individual  soul,  but  the  concept  of  the  Mystic 
Body.  The  metaphor  of  the  vine  and  its  branches 
states  the  same  concept  of  organic  unity  and  association. 
Again,  the  marginal  rendering  of  the  familar  text  "The 
kingdom  of  heaven  is  within  you,"  which  makes  it  read, 
"The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  among  you,"  has  been  em- 
phasized as  the  real  spirit  of  early  Christianity.  Some- 
thing may  also  be  guessed  from  the  scanty  references  to 
primitive  Christian  communism.  The  evidence  from 
religion  proves  to  be  a  boomerang;  for  the  appeal  is 
always  made  not  to  your  or  my  private  ideas  of  religion, 
since  they  would  not  be  accepted  in  the  forum  of  dis- 
cussion, but  to  religious  bodies,  or  platforms  of  religious 
dogma,  or  to  religious  teaching.  But  all  these  spell  or- 
ganization, authority,  and  the  subjection  of,  or  rather  the 
inclusion  of,  the  individual  within  a  doctrinal  circle.  The 
individualist  in  his  appeal  to  Christian  dogma  gets  en- 
tangled in  the  very  meshes  he  would  escape. 

The  individualist  may  take  his  final  stand  on  the  high- 
lands of  transcendental  philosophy.  There,  of  course, 
we  cannot  follow  him.  He  is  safe;  for  there,  as  in  the 
wonderland  of  Alice  and  her  looking-glass,  anything  may 
happen.  He  is  in  the  heaven  of  the  Absolute.  He  is  safe 
so  long  as  he  stays  there.  But  if  he  grows  hungry  or 
cold  or  interested  or  communicative  or  anything,  in 
short,  but  pure  contemplation  contemplating  contempla- 
tion he  is  down  in  the  midst  again.  In  the  midst  of  what? 
Of  you  and  me!  He  resumes  his  personality,  he  lives 
once  more,  because  he  lives  in  us  and  we  in  him.  He 
finds  his  real  life  in  that  very  conventionality  and  ab- 
straction which  deny  him  an  absolutely  unique  self. 

It  would  appear,  however,  that  there  are  individuals — 
at  least  near-individuals.  I  can  conceive  of  one  type, 
those  transcendentalist  and  momentary  individuals 
which  we  have  just  indicated.    And  I  have  actually  seen 


THE  PHILOSOPHY   OF   SOCIAL  BETTERMENT  27 

the  only  other  type  known;  namely,  the  gelatinoid  de- 
fective such  as  we  house  in  institutions  for  the  feeble- 
minded. The  idiot  is  as  near  the  pure  individual  as  we 
are  likely  to  get  in  this  world;  and  he  would  perish  in  a 
week  if  left  in  company  with  like  individuals.  His  only 
chance  of  life  is  the  social  nature  and  the  physical  sound- 
ness of  the  rest  of  us.  Even  the  criminal  who  is  commonly 
considered  as  an  extreme  individualist  and  antisocial  is 
social  in  spite  of  himself;  for  he  lives  off  and  through 
society,  and  usually  has  gang  ties,  or  ties  with  women. 
Try  as  he  will,  then,  no  man  liveth  unto  himself.  We 
are  hopelessly  part  and  parcel  of  each  other.  The  term 
individual  becomes,  consequently,  mere  shorthand  for  the 
phrase  "a  working  unity  of  ideas  derived  from  social 
experiences."  And  the  feeling  of  individuality  comes 
from  the  stress  of  competition  between  ideas  and  im- 
pulses derived  from  the  various  association  groups  of 
which  we  are  a  part. 

Now,  turning  to  society,  we  find  it  no  less  an  abstraction 
than  the  individual.  It  is  a  conventional  shorthand  way 
of  saying  "association  of  interest-groups,"  or  "large  or- 
ganization of  smaller  groups."  But  what  is  organization? 
It  certainly  is  neither  place  nor  thing.  It  is  merely  re- 
lation. Society  is  relationship,  mental  community.  And 
it  has  no  existence  apart  from  the  individuals  who  fur- 
nish the  occasion  for  relationship.  It  is  quite  indisput- 
able that  if  all  the  ninety-two  odd  million  persons  who 
made  up  "society"  in  the  United  States  at  the  Census  of 
19 10  suddenly  died  in  a  night  like  Sennacherib's  Assyrian 
host,  there  would  be  no  American  "society"  left  in  the 
morning.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  if  there  were  no  such 
thing  as  American  society,  no  American  could  live. 

By  society  I  understand  mental  community,  commu- 
nity of  thought,  sentiment,  interests,  ideals,  fears,  loyal- 
ties ;  mental  integration.  Society  is  a  zone  of  like-minded- 
ness.  A  society,  to  use  the  popular  term,  is  merely  a 
group  of  persons  who  are  like-minded.     This  does  not 


28  THE   SCIENTIPIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

mean  that  they  are  like-minded  in  every  respect.  One 
man  may  belong  to  a  dozen  or  a  thousand  societies.  A 
popular,  ambitious  man  at  college  is  likely  to  wear  a  vest 
front  full  of  insignia  designating  him  as  a  member  of 
various  so-called  honor  societies.  The  big  group  that 
most  people  think  of  as  society  is  a  web  of  almost  count- 
less strands  of  lesser  societary  groupings.  A  man  is  a 
member  of  as  many  societies  as  he  has  interests,  and 
society  in  the  big  is  merely  the  integrated  sum  of  this 
play  of  interests.  By  man's  social  nature,  then,  we  mean 
only  that  he  has  interests  created  by  group  life,  or  inter- 
ests which  only  group  life  can  satisfy.  It  would  not  be 
difficult  to  show  that  all  man's  higher  interests,  also  his 
sexual  interest  (which,  by  the  way,  is  a  race  and  not  an 
individual  interest),  and  even  for  the  most  part  his  self- 
maintenance  interest  cannot  be  satisfied  outside  of  group 
life.  Hence  it  is  fallacious  to  assume,  as,  for  example 
Benjamin  Kidd  did,  that  the  interests  of  the  individual 
and  the  interests  of  the  group  are  "inherently  and  essen- 
tially irreconcilable."  These  interests  are  reconciled  in 
actual  Ufe  every  day,  else  society  would  dissolve  and  its 
members  along  with  it.  So  far  is  it  from  the  truth  that 
individual  interests  are  irreconcilable  with  group  inter- 
ests, that  actually  the  opposite  is  the  reaHty ;  for  it  is  the 
reconciliation  of  individual  interests  that  creates  social 
groups  in  the  first  instance,  and  maintains  them  in  the 
second. 

So  much  clearing  of  ground  seemed  necessary  before 
addressing  the  real  problem  at  issue;  namely,  what  is  a 
man's  duty  to  society?  That  is  the  kernel  of  the 
"social  question."  A  good  deal  of  vaporizing  has  sur- 
rounded the  word  social.  Most  of  us  have  been  con- 
victed of  using  the  word  hazily  or  with  mental  reserva- 
tions. I  plead  guilty  to  having  written  of  socializing  the 
engineer,  of  social  education,  and  of  the  social  church.  I 
find  that  the  word  sometimes  refers  to  the  problem  of 
capital  and  labor,  or  to  the  problem  of  prostitution,  or  to 


THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   SOCIAL  BETTERMENT  29 

general  ethics,  or  to  the  widening  of  opportunity  for  the 
individual.  All  that  I  mean  by  the  word  here  is  sum- 
marized in  the  recent  answer  of  Professor  Small  to  the 
challenge  that  we  take  account  of  stock  with  regard  to 
this  adjective.  He  says:  ''The  plain  matter  of  fact  with 
which  all  our  sociologizings  start  is  that  no  person  exists 
in  a  moral  vacuum.  Contradiction  of  everything  like  a 
moral  vacuum  conception  of  the  lot  of  persons  is  the 
sum  and  substance  predicated  in  all  accurate  uses  of  the 
term  '  social.'  That  is,  every  person's  Ufe  touches  other 
persons '  lives.  .  .  A  '  social  point  of  view '  means  con- 
sideration of  the  whole  problem  as  an  affair  of  the  effect 
upon  all  the  persons  concerned  of  each  possible  alterna- 
tive, and  choice  of  action  in  accordance  with  the  esti- 
mated balance  of  interests. "  ^ 

From  this  standpoint  a  man's  social  duty  is  first  to  rec- 
ognize that  he  is  a  social  product,  a  loan,  so  to  speak, 
from  the  common  bank,  which,  for  want  of  a  better  word, 
we  may  call  the  social  mind.  Second,  consequently, 
that  he  must  order  his  relationships,  his  society,  in  such 
a  way  that  he  may  make  the  largest  possible  contri- 
ution  to  the  common  bank  from  which  he  got  his 
"  start."  It  is  manifestly  impossible  for  a  man  to  choose 
his  company  in  the  absolute  sense  which  individualists 
urge,  for  a  man  inherits  by  far  the  larger  part  of  his  com- 
pany. "The  Uving,"  said  August  Comte,  "are  more 
and  more  governed  by  the  dead."  Renan  and  LeBon 
have  both  demonstrated  the  power  of  the  "dust  of  dead 
gods."  But  in  a  more  limited  sense  a  man  chooses  his 
society.  Since  he  cannot  live  without  a  society  he  is 
likely  to  choose  one  ready-made  or  the  first  one  that 
happens  to  satisfy  the  interests  of  the  passing  moment. 
Hence  primitive  groups  were  chiefly  food  and  sex  and 
defense  groups;  and  their  modern  prototypes  far  out- 
number all  other  forms  of  association.    But  since  some  of 

1  "American  Journal  of  Sociology,"  Vol.  XIX,  pp.  654-5. 


30  THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

these  primary  interest-groups  may  easily  become  dan- 
gerous to  the  interests  of  the  larger  group,  some  form  of 
control,  perhaps  even  of  coercion,  is  necessary  to  bring 
about  their  adaptation  to  the  larger  need.  Hence  pro- 
bation officers  either  break  up  or  modify  gangs  of  juve- 
nile delinquents  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  they  are 
perfectly  natural  and  spontaneous  associations.  And 
police  destroy  organized  bandits  or  associations  of 
thieves  or  Black  Hand  societies,  though  again  they  are 
natural  interest-groups. 

It  is  evident  that  some  form  of  interference  must  reg- 
ulate the  relations  of  constituent  groups  to  the  bigger 
thing  we  call  society  in  the  large.  In  other  words, 
standards  of  value  must  be  set  up  and  applied  to  acts 
of  groups  as  well  as  those  of  individuals.  Those  groups 
whose  acts  menace  the  whole  must  be  suppressed;  those 
that  further  the  whole  encouraged.  Hence  the  work  of 
government,  and  by  consequence  that  of  rational  educa- 
tion, is  to  develop  in  the  individual  standards  of  val- 
uation that  will  incline  him  with  as  little  coercion  as  pos- 
sible to  select  those  associations  which  will  minister  to 
the  welfare  of  the  whole,  and  by  reflection  to  himself.  I 
do  not  mean  by  this,  certainly,  that  the  State  is  neces- 
sarily that  higher  group  for  which  the  individual  ought 
to  be  fitted.  Nor  do  I  mean  that  sense  of  obedience  to  law 
is  the  sole  test  of  social  fitness.  Emerson  declared  that  the 
highest  virtue  was  always  against  the  law;  but  neverthe- 
less he  compromised  and  paid  his  taxes,  without  loss  to 
either  himself  or  his  fellows.  The  quality  of  a  society 
may  perhaps  always  be  measured  by  the  number  and 
character  of  its  heretics,  provided  always  that  their  here- 
sies are  not  suicidal  like  bUnd  Samson's.  But  the  here- 
tic is  not  an  individualist.  He  is  always  looking  for  a 
new  and  better  society  than  those  of  which  he  is  made. 
He  may  refuse  to  conform  to  clothing  group  A,  or  food 
group  B,  or  religion  group  C,  or  political  group  X,  Y,  and 
Z.    But  it  is  always  because  he  is  trying  to  cast  his  lot 


THE   PHILOSOPHY  OF   SOCIAL  BETTERMENT  3 1 

with  ideal  groups  A^  B^  and  so  forth.  He  is  not  trying 
to  dodge  social  responsibility;  he  is  trying  to  create  new 
types  of  social  responsibility  and  to  urge  others  to  as- 
sume those  responsibilities  by  joining  with  him  in  his 
Utopia  or  his  New  Jerusalem,  or  his  great  Free  Sponta- 
neous Commonwealth  of  Anarchism. 

It  is  evident,  then,  that  the  philosophy  of  social  bet- 
terment and  social  work  must  take  some  such  view  of  the 
relation  of  the  individual  to  society  as  we  have  sketched. 
Since  association  is  still  partly  coercive,  partly  volun- 
tary, social  reform  and  social  work  must  utilize  both 
types  of  measures.  But  the  tendency  should  be  more  and 
more  to  ehminate  a  social  solidarity  based  upon  con- 
straint and  to  develop  voluntary  and  contributive  types 
of  association. 

Since,  however,  only  complete  knowledge  is  virtue,  and 
since  for  a  long  time  to  come  no  individual  or  interest- 
group  can  compasscomplete  knowledge  of  the  effects  upon 
others  of  its  desires  and  acts,  some  authority  for  inter- 
ference and  review  must  be  lodged  somewhere ;  and  how- 
ever crude  or  unsatisfactory  it  may  seem,  that  author- 
ity must  be  lodged  in  the  real  leadership  of  the  larger 
group.  Hence  the  individual  must  learn  the  negative 
virtue  of  obedience  and  adaptation,  even  of  subordina- 
tion and  renunciation. 

The  individualist  has  never  been  able  to  make  out  a 
convincing  case  for  his  thesis  that  no  relation  but  one  of 
mutual  advantage  is  desirable  or  ethical.  His  proposi- 
tion is  untenable  unless  couched  in  most  transcendental 
terms.  Neither  does  he  convince  that  education  must 
always  be  unconstrained  and  spontaneous.  I  suppose 
even  the  man  who  thought  children  should  be  allowed 
to  burn  themselves  in  order  to  learn  the  fundamental 
principle  in  physics  and  physiology  that  "fire  burns," 
would  not  hesitate  to  put  a  screen  around  his  open  fire- 
place to  keep  his  child  from  falling  in.  That  screen 
gives  away  his  whole  case;  it  is  likewise  the  symbol  of  all 


32  THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND    SOCIAL   WORK 

good  social  work.  He  argues  for  training  to  think  for 
oneself;  in  other  words,  for  the  open  mind.  But  can  he 
not  see  that  this  training  is  the  most  severe  regime  of 
discipline  through  which  child  or  man  can  be  put?  The 
reason  why  the  altruist  urges  originality  and  the  open 
mind  is  that  such  minds  are  a  social  asset,  in  that  they 
are  contributive  rather  than  purely  adaptive  or  depend- 
ent. We  must  get  away  from  the  idea  that  to  think  in 
social  terms  is  stagnation.  Or  that  group  interests  are 
served  by  sheep  minds.  Or  that  progress  is  due  to  the 
unconstrained  and  unrestrained  activity  of  individuals. 
Who  will  maintain  that  self-seeking  is  maintaining  the 
open  mind?  Is  it  not  rather  a  sign  of  mental  squint?  If 
self-seeking  be  the  spring  of  progress,  the  society  that  has 
the  largest  number  of  criminals  is  the  most  progressive. 

Nor  is  individual  invention  to  be  taken  as  the  measure 
of  progress  unless  some  organized  power  exists  for  the 
selection  and  protection  of  the  inventor  and  his  product. 
Pure  self-interest  and  individual  exploitation  simply 
mean  that  the  big  gorilla  inventor  will  snuff  out  the  lit- 
tle chimpanzee  inventor  and  destroy  or  steal  his  inven- 
tion. For  example,  a  good  many  years  ago  an  inventor 
patented  a  remarkable  improvement  in  rifles.  His  self- 
interest  prompted  him  to  sell  the  patent  to  a  firearms 
manufacturing  company.  The  company  found  that  the 
improvement  conflicted  too  seriously  with  the  type  of 
gun  they  were  making  and  marketing,  so  suppressed  it 
in  their  own  self-interest.  The  inventor  is  still  waiting 
for  the  promised  royalties.  Nobody  knows  how  much 
latent  or  active  genius  has  been  suppressed  in  just  this 
way.  Instead  of  less  interference,  such  cases  suggest 
measurably  more  power  of  social  review. 

It  is  true  that  the  individual  creates;  but  his  creation 
avails  nothing  without  some  power  to  preserve  his  crea- 
tion; and  that  power  lies  in  the  group.  Society  stores 
up  the  power  generated  by  happy  variations  in  its  mem- 
bers.   Law,  a  social  product,  is  one  of  the  means  by  which 


THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   SOCIAL  BETTERMENT  33 

this  storing  and  conserving  process  is  made  possible.  And 
it  is  this  very  storage  of  material  and  spiritual  achieve- 
ment that  releases  the  individual  of  to-day  from  having 
to  work  painfully  through  the  history  of  the  ages.  In 
short,  social  heredity,  the  storage  battery  of  past  achieve- 
ment, creates  the  individual  of  the  present.  And  that  so- 
cial heredity  is  the  record  of  the  selection  not  only  of  dif- 
ferences and  spontaneous  variations,  but  of  similarities  in 
individuals,  and  of  successful  methods  of  social  control. 

But  the  individual's  duty  to  the  group  is  not  satisfied 
by  a  mere  policy  of  noninterference,  or  of  passive  indif- 
ference. Most  of  the  individualists  I  know  have  stood 
for  the  simple  policy  of  "you  let  me  alone  and  I'll  let 
you  alone."  As  if  it  were  possible !  A  cannot  be  let  alone 
by  B  however  passionately  he  desires  it.  And  with  the 
very  best  show  of  consistency  possible  A  cannot  and  in 
fact  will  not  let  B  alone.  My  colleague  X  believes  in 
cultivating  his  mind,  loves  to  tramp  in  the  high  moun- 
tains "where  only  man  is  \dle,"  loves  to  eat  and  drink, 
eschews  all  ideas  of  career,  denies  that  he  has  any  social 
responsibility  or  that  he  ought  to  do  anything  he  does  not 
want  to  do;  his  chief  aversion  is  steady  work;  he  stoutly 
maintains  that  he  wants  every-body  else  to  enjoy  the  same 
freedom  from  responsiblity  he  enjoys.  What  is  the  re- 
sult? His  father  and  his  friends  pay  the  bills.  He  has 
involved  B  whether  B  wanted  to  be  involved  or  not. 
Suppose,  again,  that  A  has  a  child  which  he  proposes  to 
rear  according  to  the  principle  of  spontaneous  budding 
of  intellect  and  character.  He  will  avoid  correction, 
warnings,  and  all  measures  of  formal  interference  or  show 
of  authority.  A's  wife  or  friends  soon  begin  to  pay  the 
bill  in  worry,  in  broken  furniture,  in  embarrassment  over 
the  antics  of  a  young  savage.  The  child  itself  will  prob- 
ably not  thank  its  sire  for  his  Icissez-faire  policy.  And 
the  community  in  the  long  run  will  have  to  supply  the 
needed  element  of  control  which  the  parent  might  have 
given  at  much  less  cost  in  time  and  suffering.    Individ- 


34  THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

ualism  too  frequently  simply  means  laziness,  or  self- 
indulgence,  or  a  downright  policy  of  self-aggrandizement 
at  the  expense  of  one's  fellows.  And  no  complacent 
philosophy  of  mutual  hands  off  can  gloss  over  this  fact. 

The  positive  aspect  of  a  man's  duty  to  his  social  group 
is  no  less  emphatic  in  its  claims.  I  deny  by  anticipation 
the  innuendo  that  the  duty  of  positive  social  service  is 
merely  old-fashioned  charity  or  "dead  men's  shoes." 
That  is  too  close  to  the  cynic's  creed,  as  expressed,  for 
example  by  Samuel  Butler,  the  vitriolic  painter-novelist. 
"Can  anyone,"  he  asks,  "do  much  for  anyone  else  un- 
less by  making  a  will  in  his  favor  and  dying  then  and 
there?"  Charity  is  often  simply  an  attempt  to  plaster  a 
N  sore;  constructive  social  service  is  paying  back  into  the 
common  fund  the  capital  which  has  made  us  what  we  are, 
with  a  reasonable  interest  which  may  be  used  to  swell  the 
common  fund  for  the  benefit  of  others  and  perhaps  of 
ourselves.  A  man's  minimum  duty  is  the  support  of 
himself  and  of  those  obviously  dependent  upon  him. 
But  the  group  may  justly  demand  something  in  addition 
for  the  progressive  welfare  of  the  social  whole.  Surely 
at  this  date  I  do  not  need  to  go  into  the  individual  bene- 
fits to  be  received  from  community  activity  for  health, 
safety,  recreation,  or  culture.  Huxley  in  his  essay  on 
"Administrative  Nihilism"  and  Edmond  Kelley  in  his 
early  work,  "Evolution  and  Effort,"  scotched  for  good 
and  all  the  serpent  of  individualism  in  these  respects.  But 
can  the  matter  not  be  carried  legitimately  a  step  farther? 
May  not  social  duty  be  stretched  beyond  the  mere  point 
of  preventing  danger,  disease,  crime,  or  a  few  cases  of 
chronic  pauperism,  to  the  point  of  creating  a  social 
environment  which  will  favor  the  positive  increase  of 
well-being  for  every  member  of  a  community?  I  think 
it  can  and  must.  The  individual  is  by  very  definition 
committed  to  this  task.  He  can  only  Hve  out  a  rounded 
life,  a  free  life,  a  unique  life,  by  joining  voluntarily  in  the 
common  enterprise  of  social  advance. 


THE   PHILOSOPHY  OF   SOCIAL  BETTERMENT  35 

In  such  a  statement  of  the  philosophic  base  of  social 
betterment  sanctions  it  is  not  essential  that  we  say  just 
how  the  individual  is  to  serve.  The  common  principle  of 
division  of  labor  will  attend  to  that.  Naturally  his  first 
service  will  be  rendered  to  the  narrower  and  more  pressing 
interest-groups  to  which  he  belongs.  He  will  consider 
family,  labor  union,  professional  class,  birth  caste,  re- 
ligious or  philosophical  sect,  and  so  forth  before  he  rises 
to  the  height  of  caring  for  the  higher  integration  of  which 
these  are  but  fragments.  His  chief  service  to  these 
groups  will  be  to  lead  them  to  feel  their  own  limitations 
and  to  seek  a  more  \ital  and  organic  unity  with  other 
groups.  Little  by  little  his  own  vision  should  broaden, 
and  theirs;  in  time  he  should  be  able  to  compass  in  his 
imagination  and  in  his  sympathy  that  great  Being, 
Humanity,  which  according  to  Comte  is  the  only  real 
individual.  There  is  no  need  for  sentimentality  here;  in- 
deed there  is  not  room  for  it.  There  is  no  sense  of  mar- 
tyrdom, but  instead  an  opportunity  to  demonstrate  that 
probably  there  is  economic  and  sociological  truth  in  the 
profound  sentiment  uttered  by  Jesus  that  he  who  loseth 
his  life  shall  find  it.  He  who  strives  to  enlarge  his  con- 
cept of  life  by  renouncing  the  petty  cultivating  of  his 
fondly  perfumed  ego  will  arrive  at  a  sense  of  life  and 
power  undreamed-of  and  abiding. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  most  of  the  programs  of  recent  times 
bear  the  stamp  of  this  philosophy.  Socialism  is  the  most 
avowed  example.  Socialism  is  right  in  its  reaction 
against  that  species  of  individualism  which  has  resulted 
in  what  it  calls  the  anarchy  of  modern  industry.  The 
wisest  socialists,  least  of  all  people,  want  slavery,  dead 
levelism,  or  the  extinction  of  personality.  They  want 
to  clear  the  ground  of  the  material  hindrances  to  the 
development  of  a  really  adequate  personality.N  They 
seek  for  a  voluntary  and  contributive  type  of  association 
which  will  look  to  the  common  good  and  joy  in  it.  Hence 
the  socialist  aims  at  precisely  the  same  target  as  his 


36  THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

individualist  brother.  But  he  is  on  somewhat  surer 
ground;  for  he  franlvly  accepts  the  social  definition  of  the 
individual,  and  he  recognizes  the  necessity  of  having 
some  organized  power  to  review  social  survival  values. 
The  chief  objections  to  socialism  are,  it  seems  to  me,  its 
methodology  of  class  struggle,  and  its  too  rigid  concept 
of  sharply  distinct  classes.  The  theory  of  class  struggle 
is  a  too  easy  excuse  for  blind  fury  and  destructive  vio- 
lence. Worse  than  that,  it  is  looking  at  the  whole  past 
history  of  mankind  with  a  blind  eye.  For  humanity, 
human  nature,  man  as  we  know  him,  is  the  creation  of 
good  will,  teamwork,  federation,  yes,  love.  Mere 
struggle  or  hate  or  dissension  never  created  anything. 
Moreover,  society  is  not  a  set  of  pigeonholes  or  water- 
tight compartments,  but  a  cross  web  of  infinitely  fine 
strands  of  interest.  Classes  cut  across  classes,  form, 
break  down,  and  form  again.  The  failure  of  general 
strikes  illustrates  how  classes  do  not  cohere.  I  can  see 
no  prospect  for  social  reform  through  socialism  unless 
sociahsts  focus  their  efforts  more  and  more  consistently 
upon  education  in  dynamic  morality  and  in  administra- 
tive abihty,  That  is  to  say,  the  sociahsm  of  Wells  and 
Sidney  Webb  holds  more  of  promise  than  that  of  the 
Marxists. 

Progressivism  stood  somewhat  within  the  pale  of  such 
revisionist  socialists  as  Bernstein,  who  admit  reform 
measures  while  waiting  for  full  cormnunity  assumption 
of  the  means  of  production.  Whether  it  is  dead  beyond 
resurrection  as  a  separate  political  party  or  not,  it  has 
left  already  on  contemporary  thought  an  indelible  pro- 
test against  economic  individualism  of  the  militant  type. 
Paradoxical  as  it  sounds.  President  Wilson's  New  In- 
dividualism was  genuinely  socialistic,  at  least  to  the 
extent  that  it  aimed  to  control  big  business  in  the  inter- 
ests of  the  smaller  producer,  by  curbing  not  its  social 
but  its  individualistic  tendencies.     It  sought  to  general- 


THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   SOCIAL  BETTERMENT  37 

he  opportunity,  not  by  laissezfaire  but  by  more  effective 
social  control.  The  war  has  temporarily  at  least  com- 
mitted the  government  to  a  much  more  rigorous  regime 
of  control.  But  should  political  leaders  attempt  to  re- 
vive ante-bellum  kid-glove  methods  of  social  control 
over  industry  they  will  probably  fail  and  their  failure 
will  simply  strengthen  the  socialist  in  his  rejection  of  all 
mere  temporizings  with  militant  self-interest. 

Finally,  of  philosophic  individualism  itself  we  may 
venture  to  conclude  that  it  is  simply  the  transition 
stage  between  the  instinctive  sociality  of  primitive  men 
and  the  rational  self-subordination  of  citizens  of  the  City 
of  God.  That  degree  of  social  perception  will  mean,  let 
us  recognize  frankly,  the  elimination  of  the  social  worker, 
because  men  will  have  ceased  to  exploit  each  other  and 
will  have  been  educated  to  spontaneous  service.  It  will 
mean  the  passing  of  our  clumsy  organizations  and  in- 
stitutions for  human  welfare.  In  their  place — who 
knows — we  may  be  able  to  establish, 

"Without  edifices  or  rules  or  any  argument, 
The  Institution  of  the  dear  love  of  comrades." 


CHAPTER  III 

RECENT  TENDENCIES   IN   SOCIAL  REFORM 


Plunged  as  we  have  been  in  the  midst  of  wars  and 
rumors  of  wars,  where  the  very  foundations  of  existing 
law  and  order,  to  say  nothing  of  the  whole  great  struc- 
ture of  what  we  have  been  calling  the  civilized  world, 
seemed  to  be  toppling,  it  may  seem  a  vain  hope  to  talk 
of  social  reform.  Surely  the  appearances  are  against 
the  prophet.  But  prophets  were  always  the  servants  of 
lost  causes.  We  may  comfort  ourselves  with  the  hope 
that  humanity  has  second  wind,  perhaps  even  tenth  and 
hundredth  winds.  There  is  hope,  too,  in  the  fact  that 
all  of  the  straws  are  blowing  in  the  direction  of  generally 
accepting  the  modern  trend  of  social  reform  as  distinctly 
good  poHcy  in  terms  of  national  strength.  Hence,  in 
spite  of  the  fears  of  some  social  workers  that  the  war  is 
going  to  leave  the  whole  world  in  such  a  state  of  moral 
and  economic  bankruptcy  that  it  will  be  impossible  to 
find  a  leader  with  liberal  inclinations  or  a  cent  for  financ- 
ing schemes  of  social  improvement,  it  is  possible  to  be- 
lieve that  after  the  nightmare  is  over  statesmen  and 
business  men  and  all  good  citizens  will  find  that  the  sur- 
est and  speediest  road  to  reconstruction  of  social  health 
and  prosperity  is  along  the  paths  being  traced  out  by 
\  the  more  clear-sighted  of  those  much  abused  friends  of  hu- 
\  manity  called  the  progressives,  the  liberals,  the  reformers. 
Professor  Sumner  used  to  reduce  the  whole  business  of 
social  reform  to  terms  something  like  this:  A  and  B  get 
together  and  decide  what  C  shall  do  for  D.  And  there  is 
no  denying  that  a  lot  of  half-baked  "uplift,"  particularly 

38 


RECENT  TENDENCIES   IN   SOCIAL  REFORM  39 

of  the  sentimental  or  ''tag-day  "  type,  does  fit  Sumner's 
formula  admirably.  But  the  social  reform  to  which  I 
want  to  direct  attention  is  of  a  somewhat  different 
stripe.  To  be  sure  it  is  A  and  B  getting  together  to  do 
something  for  D.  But  its  fundamental  purpose  is  not 
to  throw  D  perpetually  upon  the  charity  of  C,  but,  so 
far  as  it  is  possible,  to  create  a  type  of  society  in  which 
D  can  look  after  himself.  In  other  words,  the  dominant 
note  in  social  reform  to-day  is  not  some  petty  messing 
about  trying  to  give  this  particular  D  a  little  bit  of  medi- 
cine, that  D  a  bit  of  good  advice,  and  a  million  other  D's 
bundle  days  or  free  soup  and  ten-cent  lodging  houses. 
It  is  trying  to  stop  or  at  least  to  slow  up  the  manufacture 
of  D's.  We  may  call  this  trend,  perhaps,  the  preventive 
phase  of  social  policy. 

Now,  of  course,  we  must  be  reasonable.  Social  re- 
formers are  not  trying  to  make  the  sun  rise  in  the  West 
nor  to  rule  winter  out  of  the  year's  calendar.  They  are 
trying  to  keep  within  range  of  the  humanly  possible. 
But  right  here  we  must  remember  that  some  of  us  have 
a  larger  dose  of  faith  than  other  people.  And  some  folks 
are  able  to  see  farther  and  more  clearly  than  their  neigh- 
bors. Consequently  even  the  modest  outline  of  what  I 
conceive  that  people  of  social  vision  believe  to-day  may 
seem  to  the  myopic  Faint  Hearts  utter  hallucination. 
But  remember  this,  every  accepted  institution  with  all 
its  show  of  immemorial  solidity  was  once  but  a  dream. 

When  one  turns  to  the  field  of  modern  so-called  good 
works,  the  charitable  agencies,  the  societies  for  promot- 
ing legislation,  the  Pro-thises  and  the  Anti-thats,  he  al- 
most throws  up  his  hands  in  despair  at  the  prospect  of 
attempting  to  get  any  clew  to  an  orderly  analysis  of  the 
welter.  But  a  close  study  of  those  agencies  and  those 
social  forces  that  are  really  counting  for  something  in  the 
noisy  loom  of  modem  welfare  work  brings  into  prom- 
inence at  least  three  very  clearly  defined  tendencies  or 
lines  of  action. 


40  THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

II 

The  first  of  these  hits  one  squarely  between  the  eyes 
wherever  he  turns.  It  is  the  fact  that  we  live  in  an  age 
of  more  or  less  constructive  criticism,  based  upon  the 
beginning  at  least  of  scientific  research.  Gossip  credits 
a  United  States  senator  with  observing  recently  that 
pontics  is  becoming  more  difficult  every  year.  People 
formerly  were  contented  with  the  torchlight  procession, 
the  band,  and  the  campaign  quartet;  the  speech  was  the 
merest  incident;  nobody  was  expected  to  pay  any  atten- 
tion to  it.  ''But  now,"  he  says,  "things  have  changed, 
and  I  have  to  be  careful  what  I  say!"  Constituencies 
are  becoming  somewhat  more  alert.  Taking  this  tend- 
ency at  its  best,  let  us  say  that  the  preliminary  to  any 
really  valid  social  reconstruction  is  critical  discussion. 
I  do  not  mean,  obviously  enough,  mere  venting  of  spite 
or  venom;  I  do  not  mean  incendiarism;  I  do  not  mean 
preaching  of  violent  revolution;  I  do  not  mean  the  atti- 
tude that  whatever  is  is  wrong;  nor  that  type  of  Mes- 
sianic conceit  which  sees  in  itself  the  center  and  circum- 
ference of  rightness.  To  one  such  a  local  wit  recently 
voted  a  heraldic  seal  inscribed  to  So-and-So,  Esquire, 
rampant,  above  the  remainder  of  Minneapolis  dormant! 
I  mean  the  tendency  to  accept  the  principle  that  things 
change,  and  that  the  only  way  to  transmute  mere  change 
into  rational  betterment  is  to  get  the  facts,  ponder  over 
them,  discuss  them,  and  extract,  if  possible,  some  hint 
as  to  appropriate  policy. 

Such  an  attitude  commits  us  clearly  to  accepting  the 
three  canons  of  profitable  criticism.  First,  it  must  be  sin- 
cere, not  mere  notoriety  seeking  nor  general  grouchiness 
nor  emotional  explosion.  Next,  it  must  be  seasonable 
and  timely.  The  crisis  of  war  or  other  social  cata- 
clysms which  require  speedy  and  unhampered  admin- 
istrative activity  must  set  aside  temporarily  some  of  the 
normal  privileges  of  men,  including  the  unlimited  right 


RECENT  TENDENCIES  IN   SOCIAL  REFORM  41 

of  discussion.  President  Wilson  stated  this  principle 
very  clearly  in  his  letter  to  Max  Eastman  a  few  months 
after  our  entry  into  the  war,  by  saying:  "I  think  that  a 
time  of  war  must  be  regarded  as  wholly  exceptional  and 
that  it  is  legitimate  to  regard  things  which  would  in 
ordinary  circumstances  be  innocent  as  very  dangerous  to 
the  public  welfare."  Here,  of  course,  we  strike  bottom 
on  the  problem  of  "rights"  analyzed  in  a  preceding 
chapter.  The  third  canon  of  criticism  requires  that 
it  be  constructive;  that  is,  based  on  acquaintance  with 
facts,  probity,  and  a  sense  of  perspective.  Mark  this, 
facts,  like  rights,  are  only  relative,  never  absolute,  and 
only  take  on  meaning  when  arranged  with  reference 
to  other  facts.  This  is  the  snare  of  amateur  statistics 
which  must  have  prompted  Mark  Twain's  advice  to 
"get  your  facts  first;  then  you  can  distort  'em  as  much 
as  you  please." 

Granting  these  rules  of  the  game,  what  is  the  proper 
attitude  toward  social  criticism?  The  standpatter  says, 
of  course,  that  talk  is  cheap.  Now  talk  is  cheap,  far 
cheaper  than  deputy  sheriffs  or  Uhlans.  Our  remote 
ancestors  were  direct  actionists;  they  bothered  little 
about  discussion.  If  things  were  not  as  they  ought  to 
be,  the  big  club  or  the  battle-ax  was  trotted  out  to 
break  the  cake  of  custom  by  the  simple  method  of  break- 
ing heads.  Nature  seems  to  have  foreseen  this  method 
of  social  reform  by  providing  thicker  skulls  for  our  primi- 
tive forbears.  But  the  whole  trend  of  human  history  has 
been  to  substitute  for  force  some  form  of  more  nearly 
rational  persuasion.  Slips  occur,  and  parleying  breaks 
down,  but  the  principle  remains. 

To  some  minds  it  is  hazardous  to  attempt  to  dissolve 
the  cake  of  custom  or  the  established  order  by  such  in- 
direct methods.  To  such  minds  there  is  always  some- 
thing hauntingly  dangerous  in  loosing  the  human  tongue. 
Teachers  still  lose  their  jobs  because  they  allow  their 
students  to  analyze  the  institutions  under  which  we  live. 


42  THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND    SOCIAL  WORK 

It  is  still  risky  to  discuss  the  family  or  private  property 
or  the  tariff  or  the  antiquity  of  man  or  comparative  re- 
ligion. Such  things  are  safe  enough  so  long  as  they  are 
kept  as  dead  specimens  in  a  museum.  But  to  hint  that 
they  are  live  issues  sends  a  thrill  of  horror  up  the  spines 
of  our  Brother  Fearfuls.  Such  minds  prefer  to  step  gin- 
gerly along  Problem  Street  refusing  to  look  either  to  the 
right  or  to  the  left,  hoping  and  praying  only  that  if  the 
volcano  of  denunciation  and  revolution  must  break  out 
it  will  at  least  be  after  they  are  safely  out  of  harm's  way. 

But  the  more  robust  type  of  mind  is  not  afraid  to  face 
things  squarely,  and  to  say  that  all  is  not  well  with  the 
institution  of  the  family,  that  the  whole  form  and  con- 
tent of  family  life  may  change  immensely  for  the  better, 
that  religion  still  wears  the  unclean  rags  of  earlier  ma- 
terialism and  superstition,  that  private  property  is  not 
nearly  so  sacred  as  supreme  courts  have  thought,  that 
private  business  is  not  private  property  but  public  trust, 
that  with  all  our  American  assurance  we  are  provincial 
and  at  least  a  generation  behind  warring  Europe  in  many 
of  the  essential  arts  of  life.  Mind  you,  the  men  and  wo- 
men who  say  such  uncomplimentary  things  about  our 
country,  our  times,  our  institutions,  are  not  merely  nor 
exclusively  anarchists,  nor  socialists,  nor  squint-eyed  radi- 
cals. They  are  the  hundreds  of  thousands  of  studentswho 
pass  through  high  school  and  college;  they  are  the  nearly 
four  million  members  of  the  American  Federation  of 
Labor;  they  are  captains  of  business  like  Mr.  George  W. 
Perkins  who  tells  us  that  our  thinking  is  so  wrong  and  our 
business  methods  so  bad  that  no  peace  between  capital 
and  labor  is  possible  until  we  change  our  ways ;  or  bankers 
like  Mr.  F.  W.  Vanderlip  who  accuses  American  business 
men  of  being  socially  shortsighted  because  they  are  illit- 
erate in  economics;  they  are  you  and  I,  sober  thinking 
conservatives  who  daily  challenge  the  world  to  answer 
for  its  wrongheadedness. 

We  are  all  critics;  that  is,  all  of  us  who  are  not  mere 


RECENT   TENDENCIES   IN   SOCIAL  REFORM  43 

vegetables  or  cows.  The  desperately  poor  do  not  crit- 
icise. They  simply  feel  miserable.  Criticism,  rational 
criticism  in  particular,  requires  courage  and  the  energy 
that  comes  from  sufficient  food,  clothing,  shelter,  leisure, 
and  education.  Perhaps  the  most  valuable  product  of 
three  centuries  of  the  Renaissance  and  the  Protestant 
Reformation,  one  century  of  free  public  schools,  and  fifty 
years  of  positive  science  and  public  libraries  is  just  this 
ability  to  look  about  with  a  certain  amount  of  critical 
judgment.  I  do  not  say  that  there  is  not  a  vast  amount 
of  mere  carping  and  fault  finding  and  misjudging — even 
the  best  of  coal  leaves  some  ash.  But  the  point  is  that 
the  test  of  social  as  well  as  individual  life  is  the  abihty  to 
see  a  problem  and  to  solve  it;  and  the  ability  to  see  a 
problem  is  fundamentally  an  exercise  in  critical  judg- 
ment. 

Big  business  men  are  being  taught  to  meet  this  criti- 
cal attitude  with  the  arts  of  prestige.  A  well-known 
American  publicity  man  addressing  a  group  of  railway 
officials  declared  that  success  in  solving  the  railroad  ques- 
tion rests  upon  the  art  of  getting  believed  in,  as  Henry 
VIII  and  William  HohenzoUern  were  able  to  get  their 
people  so  to  believe  in  them  that  their  contented  sub- 
jects were  glad  to  have  them  do  whatever  they  desired. 

Running  the  gantlet  of  organized  criticism  is  recog- 
nized as  a  serious  matter,  and  rightly  so.  The  method, 
says  the  publicity  man,  is  to  make  the  pubUc  believe  it 
is  contented.  Contented  cows  do  not  criticise  but  give 
rich  milk ! 

We  are  told  to  judge  not  lest  we  be  judged.  That  sim- 
ply means  we  are  to  know  the  facts.  Judgment  or  the 
critical  attitude  does  not  mean  condemnation.  Know 
your  community,  know  your  city,  survey,  cast  up  your 
social  balance  sheet:  these  are  the  day's  slogans.  This 
is  what  I  mean  by  the  tendency  to  constructive  criticism. 
Savages  when  asked  why  they  do  certain  things  simply 
say,  "We  have  always  done  them  so,  our  fathers  before 


44  THE   SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

US  did  likewise.  Therefore  what  is  is  right."  The  savage 
you  see,  is  the  arch  standpatter.  But  the  modern  social 
reformer  refuses  membership  in  the  old  tribe.  For  him 
the  best  is  yet  to  be.  Hence  he  makes  investigations, 
he  prepares  statistics,  he  studies  wages,  housing,  indus- 
trial accident,  child  labor,  and  all  the  rest  of  it.  He  pub- 
lishes reports.  He  founds  journals  hke  the  The  Survey, 
The  New  Republic,  The  National  Child  Labor  Bulletin, 
Housing  Betterment,  The  American  Labor  Legislation  Re- 
view, and  a  dozen  others.  The  government  wakes  up  and 
adds  its  quota  of  ammunition  to  the  discussion,  with  cen- 
sus reports,  bulletins  on  wages,  industrial  hygiene,  cost 
of  Hving,  infant  welfare,  child  labor,  homes  for  working 
folk.  These  are  the  multiple  plows  which  are  being 
driven  daily  through  the  friable  soil  of  our  minds,  that 
same  soil  which  but  a  few  generations  ago  would  have  re- 
quired dynamite  to  break  it  up  for  the  sowing  process. 

Let  meetings  of  protest  multiply,  then;  let  nothing  be 
done  to  hinder  the  freest  expression  of  the  right  to  assem- 
ble and  voice  approval  or  grievance,  of  course  within  the 
three  canons  already  laid  down  as  to  legitimate  and  prof- 
itable criticism;  let  the  printing  presses  groan  and  the 
postman  stagger  with  the  multitude  of  pamphlets  and 
journals  of  social  discussion.  If,  for  example,  Comstock- 
ery  and  the  police  or  the  church  attempt  to  suppress  de- 
cent discussion  of  such  a  vital  issue  as  birth  control,  we 
may  be  sure  it  will  be  indecently  distorted  in  the  press  or 
elsewhere.  Prudery  invokes  prosecutions  against  vari- 
ous sorts  of  well-meant  inanity,  but  inanity  persecuted 
assumes  the  cloak  of  wisdom.  The  crank  is  not  going  to 
be  any  less  cranky  if  you  bottle  him  up.  Let  him  uncork 
ere  he  burst.  Meanwhile  the  men  and  women  of  social 
vision  will  see  to  it  that  nothing  is  done  in  a  comer,  and 
upon  the  basis  of  the  facts  that  they  dig  out  of  the  cor- 
ners and  elsewhere,  we  may  hope  to  have  some  hints  of 
a  better  type  of  social  structure. 

This,  then,  is  what  I  mean  by  the  strong  trend  toward 


RECENT   TENDENCIES   IN   SOCIAL  REFORM  45 

constructive  criticism  as  a  method  of  social  reform.  And 
despite  much  vapidity  and  muckraking  and  so-called 
"raids  on  prosperity,"  the  trend  is  unmistakably  sound, 
valuable,  and  productive.  If  I  were  to  summarize  the 
value  to  social  reform  of  this  social  criticism  I  should  say 
that  it  lies  in  making  our  social  policy  the  result  of  care- 
fully thought-out  convictions  and  not  a  hit-or-miss 
series  of  scared  concessions  to  stave  off  revolt.  Inci- 
dentally it  waters  the  springs  of  that  real  democracy  for 
which  we  went  forth  to  battle. 


in 

The  second  unmistakable  trend  in  modem  social  re- 
form is  the  tendency  toward  collective  control  over  all 
the  conditions  of  community  life.  From  the  legal  stand- 
point we  might  call  this  trend  the  rapid  extension  of  the 
police  power  of  the  State.  Clearly  this  cannot  mean  in- 
creasing the  number  of  professional  policemen,  sheriffs, 
or  militia.  So  far  as  I  know  there  is  no  tendency  to  in- 
crease the  negative  side  of  police  work.  Clubs  and  hand- 
cuffs are  even  less  in  evidence  than  they  were  a  genera- 
tion ago.  It  is  the  increase  of  positive  policing  which  is 
so  pronounced.  It  is  the  use  of  policemen  as  sanitary 
inspectors  or  safety  devices  that  we  have  to  notice.  For 
example,  in  New  York  policemen  have  been  directed  to 
protect  socialist  meetings  from  interference  and  disturb- 
sances  intead  of  dispersing  them  by  clubs  and  riding 
them  down.  And  not  long  ago,  they  were  used  as  in- 
vestigators of  unemployment.  But  police  power  means 
far  more  than  policemen.  The  police  power  or  "public 
polity  power"  of  the  State  means  the  general-welfare 
function  of  the  State.  Our  Constitution  laid  upon  this 
government  a  century  and  a  quarter  ago  the  duty  of 
promoting  the  general  welfare.  But  government  was 
somewhat  slow  in  grasping  the  meaning  of  this  duty. 
It  was  concerned  chiefly  with  protecting  us  from  foreign 


46  THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

danger  and  from  violence  or  disruption  from  within.  Its 
general  attitude  was  to  keep  hands  off  until  trouble  ac- 
tually threatened.  But  a  distinct  change  of  attitude  is 
now  observed.  The  sum  of  state  duty  is  not  now  merely 
to  avoid  trouble  but  to  "secure  and  promote  the  public 
welfare."  The  government  is  not  the  passive  policeman, 
but  the  active  welfare  worker.  It  actually  initiates  good 
works  instead  of  merely  reviewing  the  acts  of  humanity 's 
well-wishers.  It  does  not  wait  until  disputes  arise  be- 
tween industrial  factions,  but  now  tends  to  assume  col- 
lective control  over  the  industrial  conditions  which  breed 
disputes.  In  short,  its  function  is  more  and  more  clearly 
preventive  and  constructive.    Let  me  illustrate. 

For  the  first  century  of  our  national  life,  public  author- 
ity permitted  an  almost  absolutely  unrestricted  exploita- 
tion of  the  country's  natural  resources  in  land,  timber, 
water,  minerals.  It  was  the  era  of  expansion  and  con- 
quest of  a  rude,  untamed,  but  marvelously  rich  wilder- 
ness. Incredible  fortunes  were  amassed.  But  inciden- 
tally incredible  wastefulness  and  improvidence  grew 
before  our  eyes.  At  last  the  idea  burst  upon  us  that  the 
principle  of  unlimited  exploitation,  of  "after  us  the  del- 
uge," was  unsound  social  policy,  and  the  government 
interfered.  Now  comes  the  policy  of  national  conserva- 
tion of  natural  resources.  Now  the  government  sets 
aside  national  reserves  of  forest  and  mineral  lands, 
assumes  control  over  sources  of  natural  water  power, 
reclaims  desert  land  or  swamp,  protects  wild  game,  and 
the  like.  Community  control  over  what  is  regarded  as 
the  community  heritage  is  now  definitely,  though  be- 
latedly, accepted  as  a  business  principle.  Not  very  long 
ago  we  read  a  statement  from  Judge  Gary  of  the  United 
States  Steel  Corporation  to  the  effect  that  "  It  is  rapidly 
dawning  upon  the  clearest  thinking  of  our  citizens  that 
there  is  still  a  higher  kind  of  efficiency  than  that  of  com- 
petitive individualism;  namely,  the  efficiency  of  prop- 
erly devised  and  safeguarded  cooperation."    Notice,  in 


RECENT   TENDENCIES   IN   SOCIAL  REFORM  47 

passing,  that  it  is  at  least  a  half  turn  in  a  gradual  revo- 
lution in  the  idea  of  private  property.  This  is  the  posi- 
tive side  of  it.  Whatever  else  the  great  war  may  accom- 
plish it  is  sure  to  emphasize  this  positive  principle  in  the 
process  of  social  reconstruction.  The  negative  appears 
in  the  cumulative  tendency  to  suppress  things  and  trades 
considered  harmful  to  health  and  efficiency  or  abhorrent 
to  decency.  Hence  the  nation-wide  wave  of  prohibition, 
the  Federal  Food  and  Drugs  Act,  the  Mann  Act  pro- 
hibiting the  White  Slave  trade,  and  the  pretty  general 
move  to  suppress  commercialized  vice. 

Another  phase  of  the  same  tendency  appears  in  the 
world-wide  drift  toward  public  ownership  of  the  great 
public  utilities — transportation,  light,  heat,  power,  min- 
erals. Government  ownership  in  Alaska  and  the  mu- 
nicipal ownership  of  many  utilities  are  salient  examples. 
The  wide  range  of  these  new  forms  of  pubhc  ownership 
is  disconcerting  to  the  older  generation.  Many  Ameri- 
can cities  now  own  their  own  lighting,  heat,  and  water 
plants,  telephones,  street  cars,  street-paving  plants, 
electrical  supply  stores,  ice  and  cold-storage  plants, 
ferries,  theaters,  abattoirs,  markets,  and  coal  yards  be- 
side their  regular  education,  health,  and  recreational 
equipment.  You  notice  I  called  the  tendency  a  drift. 
By  that  I  meant  to  say  that  whether  it  is  a  good  tendency 
or  a  bad  tendency  it  is  too  early  to  judge.  But  the  ten- 
dency itself  is  undeniable.  It  may  be  that  the  people  have 
not  fully  counted  the  costs.  It  may  be  that  the  wastes 
and  the  inefficiency  will  be  great.  But  the  drift  has  set  in 
just  the  same.  Wholesale  interference  of  government  in 
business  in  the  European  War  has  shown  that  the  thing 
is  possible  and  even  immensely  practicable  even  in  such 
strongholds  of  individualism  and  suspicion  of  govern- 
mental initiative  as  England.  And  we  may  be  sure  that 
the  lesson  will  not  be  lost  to  the  American  people.  In- 
deed many  great  utihty  corporations  are  silently  pre- 
paring for  der  Tag.    Many  of  them  will  make  no  serious 


48  THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

protest;  many  will  welcome  public  ownership  as  a  relief 
from  public  regulation;  some  are  actually  abetting  the 
move.  This  may  be  State  Socialism,  but  whatever  the 
name,  it  is  with  us;  and  we  may  be  pretty  sure  that  the 
movement  will  not  stop  with  the  utilities  we  have  men- 
tioned. Other  basic  utilities  covering  food,  housing, 
leisure  may  easily  follow.  And  all  under  the  principle  of 
positive  police  power  in  the  service  of  public  welfare. 

Meanwhile,  both  the  very  momentum  of  the  current 
itself  and  the  examples  of  European  countries  borne  in 
upon  us  by  the  stress  of  the  war  speed  up  the  rate  of 
public  assumption  of  control.  The  Non-Partisan  League 
of  the  upper  Mississippi  Valley  openly  demands  not 
merely  state  but  federal  ownership  of  grain  elevators 
and  other  marketing  agencies.  Massachusetts  gravely 
votes  on  a  constitutional  amendment  permitting  cities 
and  towns  to  buy  and  sell  necessities  of  life  for  the  ben- 
efit of  their  citizens.  New  Jersey  acts  somewhat  sim- 
ilarly. In  California  the  state  market  commission  began 
to  fix  maximum  prices  of  fruit,  fish,  and  other  products 
at  least  a  year  before  the  federal  food  administration 
got  under  way,  and  the  courts  by  inference  have  sus- 
tained its  exercise  of  power.  The  sLxty-fourth  Congress 
appropriated  $50,000,000  for  a  government  controlled 
merchant  marine,  $11,000,000,  for  a  government  armor- 
plate  factory,  and  many  more  millions  for  good  roads 
and  land  reclamation.  It  becomes  increasingly  apparent 
that  the  only  water-power  legislation  which  this  country 
will  tolerate  must  include  rigorously  guarded  provisions 
for  federal  control  and  easy  "recapture"  of  rights  leased 
to  private  companies.  The  governments,  both  state  and 
national,  are  waking  up  to  a  new  concept  of  their  duty 
in  the  field  of  housing,  town  planning,  and  small  holdings 
of  land.  The  federal  Congress  appropriated  at  least 
$100,000,000  for  housing  munition  workers.  Massa- 
chusetts by  constitutional  amendment  permits  building, 
with  public  funds,  homes  for  workers  to  be  sold  at  cost. 


RECENT   TENDENCIES   IN   SOCIAL  REFORM  49 

The  State  of  California  is  launching  a  small  farms  experi- 
ment of  unusual  interest.  And  in  general  it  may  be  said 
that  the  courts  are  becoming  more  and  more  liberal  in 
their  recognition  of  community  over  individual  rights  in 
such  matters  as  zoning,  excess  condemnation,  or  nui- 
sances. Quite  apart  from  the  war,  strong  demands  have 
been  going  up  from  conservative  quarters  for  federal 
control  or  ownership  or  any  other  method  by  which  the 
anthracite  coal  monopoly  might  be  broken  up.  And  we 
have  moved  so  far  toward  federalizing  the  railroads  that 
there  is  scant  likelihood  of  our  ever  going  bacji  to  the  old 
and  wasteful  system  of  private  exploitation.  Whether 
telephones,  cables,  and  telegraphs  follow  is  merely  a 
matter  of  expediency  about  which  it  is  not  easy  to  stir 
up  much  feverish  emotion.  More  straws  indicating  the 
force  and  direction  of  the  current  will  appear  in  a  later 
chapter. 

Take  another  illustration.  The  police  power  of  the 
State  provides  the  legal  basis  for  labor  legislation.  All 
that  mass  of  law  and  court  decisions  relating  to  wages, 
hours  of  labor,  child  labor,  accident  compensation  and 
women's  work  which  has  been  piling  up  recently  relates 
back  to  the  primary  constitutional  provision  about  pub- 
lic welfare.  But  you  may  ask,  as  many  others  have  been 
asking,  "  Who  is  the  public?  Are  labor  unions,  the  unem- 
ployed, women  and  children  the  public?  Isn't  the  owner 
of  property  or  the  employer  also  the  public?  "  Quite  so. 
But  the  point  is,  that  our  whole  American  political 
and  social  system  is  based  upon  industrial  property 
right,  as  President  Hadley  shows.  Our  federal  govern- 
ment and  our  Constitution  are  distinctly  creations  by  and 
in  behalf  of  a  propertied  class.  Private  property  has 
been  the  guide  to  legislation  and  court  decisions.  Labor 
has  been  conceived  of  only  in  terms  of  its  attitude  to 
property.  Indeed  because  laboring  people  have  been 
looked  upon  as  potentially  equal  to  other  property  hold- 
ers before  the  law,  labor  has  usually  been  the  defendant 


50  THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

in  court  actions.  But  recently  an  urgent  attempt  has 
been  made  to  mark  off  the  rights  of  the  individual  as 
against  those  of  property.  "Where  the  acquisition  of 
property  is  measurably  within  the  reach  of  all  there  can 
be  no  conflict  between  property  rights  and  individual 
rights.  But  since  the  Civil  War  there  has  been  develop- 
ing in  this  country  a  larger  and  larger  class  to  whom  the 
acquisition  of  even  a  small  amount  of  property  is  less  and 
less  possible.  And  at  the  same  time  there  have  appeared 
large  accumulations  of  property  in  the  hands  of  a  small 
number  of  persons.  Thus  has  arisen  a  conflict  between 
property  rights  and  individual  rights."  Thus  writes 
Professor  W.  F.  Dodd,  one  of  America's  ablest  students 
of  the  constitutional  aspects  of  social  legislation. 

About  the  facts  there  can  no  longer  be  any  reasonable 
question.  In  the  last  twenty-five  years,  several  author- 
itative studies  have  been  made  of  the  distribution  of 
wealth  and  income  in  the  United  States.  Spahr,  Brooks, 
Hunter,  Rubinow,  and  most  recently  Professor  King 
have  demonstrated  the  gross  inequalities  in  the  incidence 
of  property  and  income.  I  suppose  it  is  perfectly  safe 
to  say  that  two-thirds  of  our  total  population  are  wage 
workers  not  wholly  without  property,  but  at  least  in- 
considerable from  the  standpoint  of  fixed  capital;  about 
one-fifth  are  farmers  and  the  remaining  one-seventh, 
capitalists,  small  traders,  and  members  of  the  professional 
class.  It  is  well  within  the  truth  to  say  that  somewhat 
less  than  one-half  of  all  our  people  are  propertyless,  at 
least  from  the  standpoint  that  they  do  not  possess  enough 
to  benefit  either  by  the  discipline  of  ownership  or  the 
social  stability  which  property  confers;  nor  are  they 
insured  against  the  vicissitudes  of  the  industrial  system. 

It  is  for  this  reason  that  the  disinherited,  the  property- 
less,  the  weaker  classes  have  become  of  such  concern  to 
the  police  power  of  the  State,  and  this  is  why  the  interests 
of  owners  of  large  property  as  such  must  give  way  to 
the    broader    interests    of    society.      "The    individual, 


RECENT  TENDENCIES  IN  SOCIAL  REFORM  5 1 

whether  with  or  without  property,  is  the  object  of  the 
new  social  and  industrial  legislation,"  says  Dodd;  not  in 
the  sense  of  some  absolute  individual,  but  in  the  sense  of  a 
vital  part  of  an  organic  whole.  It  is  apparent  to  such 
conservative  thinkers  as  President  Hadley  that  whether 
we  like  it  or  not  the  current  is  flowing  toward  the  protec- 
tion of  the  weaker  and  that  there  can  be  no  permanent 
turning  back.  We  are  committed  to  a  policy  of  protec- 
tion, protection  of  our  nation's  human  resources,  for 
that,  in  short,  is  what  the  whole  thing  amounts  to.  That 
is  why  courts,  notably  the  United  States  Supreme  Court, 
are  coming  more  and  more  to  consider  not  narrow  legal 
technicalities  but  broad  social  poHcies  in  labor  decisions; 
that  is  why  they  no  longer  ask  themselves,  is  some  tradi- 
tional theory  of  free  contract  contravened,  but  are  the 
health,  morality,  and  efficiency  of  workers  at  stake?  For 
example,  the  courts  gave  respectful  attention  to  the  great 
briefs  of  Mr.  Brandeis  not  because  they  referred  to  aged 
and  respectable  laws,  but  because  they  appealed  to  facts 
of  psychology,  of  physiolog}',  of  economics,  of  sociology,  of 
race  welfare.  And  in  general  it  may  be  held  that  the  ac- 
ceptance of  these  facts,  the  frank  recognition  of  the  in- 
equality of  bargaining  power  between  employee  and  em- 
ployer, is  the  point  of  departure  for  most  labor  legislation, 
notwithstanding  the  equally  frank  and  clear  perception 
that  such  an  attitude  and  such  legislation  is  undeniably 
and  necessarily  class  legislation. 

The  Supreme  Court  gave  this  idea  classic  expression 
in  its  famous  doctrine  of  "reasonable  classification"  as 
laid  down  in  the  case  of  Holden  v.  Hardy  in  1898.  Said 
the  court:  "It  is  by  recognizing  this  inequality  of  bar- 
gaining power,  coupled  with  a  public  purpose,  that  the 
courts  pass  over,  in  any  particular  case,  from  the  theory 
of  class  legislation  to  the  theory  of  reasonable  classifica- 
tion. The  two  are  identical  in  one  respect;  all  classifica- 
tion is  class  legislation,  but  the  kind  of  class  legislation 
which  the  courts  condemn  is  that  which  they  consider 


52  THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL   WORK 

to  be  'unreasonable'  classification.  Class  legislation 
benefits  or  burdens  one  class  against  others  where  there 
is  no  real  inequality  or  no  public  benefit.  '  Reasonable ' 
classification  benefits  or  burdens  a  class  where  there  is 
real  inequality  to  be  overcome  and  a  public  benefit  to 
be  attained.  That  which  is  class  legislation  at  one  time 
may  become  reasonable  classification  at  a  later  time,  if 
the  court  perceives  that  what  it  once  thought  was  equal- 
ity is  really  inequality,  and  what  it  once  thought  was 
merely  private  benefit  is  also  public  benefit." 

This  is  why  laws  and  court  decisions  multiply,  fixing 
certain  minimums  of  wages,  hours  of  labor,  and  working 
conditions.  There  is,  for  example,  a  well-defmed  ten- 
dency to  establish  minimum  wages  by  law.  Primarily 
the  laws  apply  to  women,  but  there  is  no  real  reason 
why  they  should  not  be  extended  to  men.  Modern 
industry  is  so  complex  and  cost-accounting  systems  so 
imperfect  that  it  is  all  but  impossible  to  give  exact  mean- 
ing to  the  phrase,  "the  product  of  one's  own  labor"  as 
it  could  be  given  under  the  old  handicraft  system  where 
a  single  worker  turned  out  a  complete  article.  Economic 
theory  can  fix  certain  limits,  but  within  these  there  is  a 
certain  twilight  zone  in  which  law  or  bargaining  or  both 
must  operate  and  decide.  Otherwise,  as  Chief  Justice 
White  inferred  in  upholding  the  Adamson  law  in  19 17, 
we  should  be  reduced  to  a  position  of  stalemate  in  which 
a  void  or  rather  a  state  of  anarchy  existed  by  virtue  of 
the  fact  that  private  right  had  destroyed  public  right. 
Hence  in  terms  of  general  social  policy  we  might  say  that 
minimum  wage  reform  is  an  attempt,  not  to  subsidize 
the  inefficient  but  to  make  up  the  "social  deficit  be- 
tween wages  and  life." 

It  must  be  recognized,  moreover,  that  a  good  deal  of 
real  wage  legislation  goes  on  under  other  names.  I  mean 
that  there  is  even  in  the  United  States  a  notable  tendency 
toward  what  might  be  called  "national  distribution" 
or  indirect  subventions  to  private  income  in  the  forms  of 


RECENT  TENDENCIES   IN   SOCIAL  REFORM  53 

vocational  education,  recreation  (playgrounds,  bathing 
beaches,  pubUc  baths,  parks,  community  centers,  etc.), 
insurance,  pensions,  to  supplement  industrial  distribu- 
tion in  the  form  of  wages.  Not  all  these  moves  have  so 
far  demonstrated  their  unqualilied  right  to  be.  The 
matter  of  old-age  pensions,  for  example,  is  obviously  a 
makeshift  sort  of  measure,  a  confession  that  sickness, 
vocational  unpreparedness,  speeding  up  of  industry, 
imcompensated  accident,  low  wages,  thriftlessness,  and 
other  untoward  conditions  have  been  allowed  to  produce 
a  dependent  and  helpless  old  age.  But  on  the  whole  we 
shall  have  to  be  prepared  for  a  considerable  extension  of 
police  power  in  these  forms  of  public  welfare.  In  this 
connection  we  might  point  out  the  strong  trend  toward 
public  as  against  private  relief  work ;  or,  if  you  prefer,  the 
tendency  to  supplant  private  charity  with  public  relief. 
The  whirlwind  of  mothers'  pension  legislation  and  the 
extension  of  public  supervision  over  private  charities  are 
clear  illustrations. 

Along  the  same  line  is  the  tendency  to  regulate  hours 
of  labor.  Here  organized  labor  itself  has  taken  the  lead 
and  set  as  a  general  standard  an  eight-hour  day.  How  far 
short  of  that  ideal  we  have  fallen  is  apparent  to  anybody 
living  in  any  great  industrial  center  where  labor  unions 
have  been  crushed,  as  in  the  Pittsburgh  district,  or  where 
areas  have  been  given  over  to  big  unregulated  production 
in  basic  industries.  It  may  be  that  the  hours  of  men's 
labor  have  to  be  left  to  bargaining  by  strikes  and  the 
other  arms  of  industrial  conflict,  or  to  the  gradual  pene- 
tration into  the  thick  skulls  of  captains  of  industry  that 
a  ten-hour  or  twelve-hour  day  is,  generally  speaking, 
terribly  wasteful  both  in  the  short  run  and  the  long 
run.  Meanwhile,  however,  public  control  has  extended 
itself  over  the  hours  of  women  and  children,  with 
night  work  prohibited.  The  average  minimum  child-labor 
age,  taking  the  country  as  a  whole,  is  approximately 
fourteen  years.    But  there  is  a  distinct  tendency  to  con- 


54  THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

sider  sixteen  as  the  normal  school  period,  and  with  the 
development  of  vocational  education,  to  extend  the  pe- 
riod of  half-time  work  three  or  four  years  longer  by  means 
of  continuation  schools.  The  legislatures  and  courts, 
under  the  guise  of  caring  for  posterity,  have  constituted 
women  and  children  a  favored  class.  Just  as  soon  as 
they  wake  up  officially  to  the  fact  that  fathers  are 
equally  necessary  to  posterity  we  may  rest  assured  that 
what  is  sauce  for  the  goose  will  be  recognized  as  sauce 
for  the  gander,  and  more  definite  protection  will  be  given 
to  men  with  regard  to  their  working  day. 

Some  legislation  has  recognized  also  the  advisability  of 
one  day's  rest  in  seven.  And  organized  labor  in  general 
approves  the  idea,  but  refuses  to  go  on  record  in  favor 
of  any  one  particular  day  of  the  seven. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  and  rapid  extensions  of 
police  power  has  occurred  within  the  last  few  years  in  the 
field  of  accident  and  sickness  prevention,  not  only  among 
factory  or  railway  workers,  but  throughout  the  whole  so- 
cial body.  Safety  First,  Play  Safe,  Be  Careful,  Walk 
Right,  Don't  Spit,  Swat  the  Fly,  Bat  the  Rat,  and  sim- 
ilar slogans  greet  us  where'er  we  walk.  And  rightly  so. 
All  such  efforts  to  conserve  the  lives  and  health  of  men, 
women  and  children,  are  based  upon  the  sociological 
principle  that  we  are  all  members  one  of  another,  that 
we  are  hopelessly  bound  together  with  bonds  all  but  or- 
ganic, that  as  one  person  or  group  is  disabled  all  the  rest 
must  suffer  sympathetically. 

Another  illustration.  PubKc  responsibility  for  unem- 
ployment is  gradually  being  shouldered.  The  experiences 
of  the  winter  of  19 14  waked  us  up  as  never  before  to  the 
necessity  of  organizing  industry  and  in  particular  the 
labor  market  so  as  to  avoid  the  tremendous  losses  in 
money,  in  character  and  in  industrial  efficiency  through 
intermittent  employment.  Both  the  federal  and  some 
state  governments  are  coming  to  a  realization  that  the 
job  is  so  immense  that  perhaps  only  the  welfare  power  of 


RECENT   TENDENCIES  IN   SOCIAL  REFORM  55 

the  State  can  handle  it.  Of  course  for  a  long  time  we  have 
had  at  least  in  name  public  employment  bureaus.  But 
the  less  said  about  them  the  better.  The  recent  tend- 
ency has  been  for  the  federal  government  to  extend  this 
bureau  service,  to  relate  reclamation  and  conservation 
projects  and  other  forms  of  public  works  to  periods  of 
depression  in  ordinary  industry.  There  is  even  talk  of 
following  European  examples  by  introducing  some  form 
of  unemployment  insurance;  Massachusetts  is  actually 
considering  a  bill  for  this  purpose.  Demobilization  has 
aggravated  the  need  for  stabilizing  employment  and  for 
forcing  extensions  of  pubhc  service  in  this  direction. 

There  is  every  prospect  of  certain  extensions  of  the 
idea  of  public  insurance  against  sickness  and  industrial 
disease.  So  far  the  American  mind  has  resented  the  idea 
of  compulsory  insurance,  and  our  constitutions,  federal 
and  state,  as  they  now  stand,  back  up  this  attitude  of 
mind.  But  Wisconsin  has  already  gone  into  the  business 
of  public  life  insurance;  California  and  other  States  are 
writing  industrial  insurance;  the  federal  government  set  a 
revolutionary  pace  with  its  military  and  naval  insurance 
law  of  19 17;  and  the  great  private  life-insurance  compan- 
ies are  beginning  to  take  heed  of  the  competition  and 
to  mend  their  ways.  They  are  much  in  the  same  position 
as  the  utility  corporations  and  have  had  the  same  warning 
sounded  in  their  ears.  The  growing  concept  that  private 
property  is  a  public  trust  may  be  expected  to  attain  such 
strength  that  the  law,  the  constitutions,  and  the  courts 
will  become  more  favorably  disposed  toward  the  idea  of 
compulsory  insurance  for  health.  If  I  am  compelled  to 
give  of  my  time  and  my  money  to  keep  my  sidewalk 
clean  or  to  send  my  children  to  school,  why  should  I  re- 
fuse to  contribute  for  insurance,  particularly  when  one  of 
the  surest  results  of  that  insurance  policy  will  be  to  re- 
move some  of  the  conditions  which  threaten  my  health 
and  the  health  of  my  fellow  citizens?  This  argument  is 
implicit  in  the  insurance  movement,  and  is  almost  cer- 


56  THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

tain  to  catch  the  public  mind  in  time.  If  we  could  only 
devise  some  word  less  odious  than  compulsory,  the  way 
would  be  sure  and  quick.  This  is  just  as  true  of  compul- 
sory vocational  education  as  of  insurance.  If  we  could 
do  the  business  without  the  adjective,  in  one  generation  or 
sooner  custom  would  accept  the  practice  and  we  should 
feel  the  weight  of  insurance  scarcely  more  than  we  feel 
the  weight  of  the  atmosphere. 

In  all  of  these  extensions  of  public-welfare  power  must 
be  recognized  certain  ideas  somewhat  disruptive  to  the 
nice  old  tidy  arrangement  of  our  governmental  house. 
Somehow  or  other  the  kitchen  threatens  the  sovereignty 
of  the  parlor  or  bedroom;  and  there  is  danger  that  the 
coachman  may  sometimes  install  himself  as  butler  or 
cook.  The  old  fetish  of  absolute  separation  of  the  powers 
of  government  is  assailed,  at  least  by  impUcation.  Both 
courts  and  legislatures  are  still  somewhat  jealous  over 
relinquishing  to  administrative  agencies  the  powers  of 
legislation  and  judgment  on  matters  of  detail.  But  the 
tendency  is  undoubtedly  to  enlarge  the  scope  of  admin- 
istrative activity.  State  Boards  of  Control  exercise  many 
judicial  and  rule-making  powers  in  pubhc  charitable  and 
correctional  activities.  They  prescribe  rules  governing 
state  institutions,  adjudge  disputes  between  counties  on 
matters  of  responsibility  for  the  poor,  etc.  Minimum 
Wage  Boards  and  Industrial  Welfare  Commissions  have 
been  given  authority  to  frame  and  prescribe  minimum 
wages  and  detailed  standards  of  working  conditions,  for 
example,  in  Wisconsin,  Minnesota,  and  the  three  Pacific 
States.  This  means  both  a  process  of  judgment,  the  deter- 
mination of  fact  by  accurate  and  reasonable  investigative 
methods,  and  detailed  legislation,  the  fixing  of  standards 
and  rules  based  on  those  judicial  findings,  within  the  gen- 
eral legislation  creating  such  boards  or  commissions.  If 
at  any  future  time  the  objections  to  this  delegation  of 
authority  are  renewed  on  constitutional  grounds  and  are 
sustained  by  the  United  States  Supreme  Court  it  will 


RECENT  TENDENCIES  IN   SOCIAL  REFORM  57 

be  possible  still  to  forestall  such  objections  by  a  definite 
constitutional  amendment  similar  to  that  passed  by 
California  in  19 14  expressly  permitting  it. 

That  this  redistribution  of  governmental  powers  is 
inevitable  appears  in  an  expUcit  statement  made  by  the 
highest  court  of  Minnesota  in  the  case  of  State  ex.  rel. 
John  F.  Kelly  v.  Henry  Wolfer,  involving  the  power  of 
the  Board  of  Control  to  transfer  a  prisoner  from  one 
penal  institution  to  another.  The  court  held  that  the 
newer  concept  of  punishment  as  reformative  treatment 
"of  necessity  involves  an  extension  of  the  administrative 
side  of  the  penal  system,  and  imperatively  demands 
greater  freedom  and  wider  powers  on  the  part  of  the 
executive  and  administrative  officers.  .  .  The  changes 
in  the  conceptions  of  *  punishment'  and  of  sentence  for 
crime  .  .  .  necessarily  require  that  the  constitutional 
division  of  the  government  into  three  departments 
should  receive,  so  far  as  the  question  here  under  con- 
sideration is  concerned,  a  more  liberal  construction  than 
might  have  been  logically  possible  when  this  provision 
was  inserted  in  the  first  American  Constitution.  .  .  Con- 
stitutions are  not  made  for  existing  conditions,  nor  in  the 
view  that  the  state  of  society  will  not  advance  or  im- 
prove, but  for  future  emergencies  and  conditions,  and 
their  terms  and  provisions  are  constantly  expanded  and 
enlarged  by  construction  to  meet  the  advancing  and 
improving  affairs  of  men."  Moreover,  historically,  it  is 
perfectly  possible  to  prove  that  the  executive  branch  of 
government  is  usually  the  dynamic  agent,  and  that  if 
government  contributes  anything  at  all  to  social  progress 
it  is  through  wise  and  foreward  reaching  administration. 

Let  me  summarize  here  briefly  the  chief  aspects  of  the 
trend  toward  collective  control.  They  are,  first,  the  tend- 
ency to  substitute  a  sense  of  unnecessary  waste  and  a 
desire  to  conserve  social  resources  for  the  older  attitude 
of  condescending  pity  and  the  thrill  of  horror  over  the 
grim  ways  of  an  inscrutable  Providence.     Second,  the 


58  THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

tendency  toward  public  ownership  of  basic  public  util- 
ities. Third,  the  tendency  to  magnify  the  interests  of 
persons  against  those  of  property.  Fourth,  the  fixing 
of  minimum  standards  of  wages,  hours,  health,  and  safety 
in  industry.  Fifth,  public  responsibility  for  insuring  the 
education,  health,  life,  and  employment  of  all  citizens. 
And  all  of  these  may  be  considered  not  as  dangerous  and 
illegal  innovations,  but  as  extensions  of  the  fundamental 
and  inherent  police  power  of  the  State.  Incidentally  you 
can  see  the  close  bearing  which  these  factors  have  upon 
the  general  problem  of  dependency  and  crime,  particu- 
larly upon  their  reduction  or  elimination. 

IV 

The  third  path  along  which  social  reform  has  been 
moving  comes  as  the  necessary  result  of  the  extension  of 
public  control.  It  is  the  tendency  to  recognize  the  expert 
and  real  civil  service  in  public  administration.  As  Pres- 
dent  Hadley  says,  "Demand  for  state  control  of  indus- 
try and  for  trained  civil  service  must  go  hand  in  hand." 
One  would  not  of  course  hazard  a  reputation  for  con- 
servative statement  by  saying  that  we  had  attained 
already  the  desired  goal  of  administrative  honesty  or 
efficiency  in  the  public  service.  Governmental  dry  rot 
and  political  corruption  are  not  yet  quite  stamped  out. 
But  remember  I  am  speaking  not  of  accomplished  facts 
but  of  general  tendencies.  Hence  I  can  safely  say  that 
there  is  a  distinct  move  in  the  direction  of  better  public 
administration.  Americans  are  slowly  giving  up  their 
inherited  prejudice  against  the  expert.  They  may  still 
consider  that  they  are  the  equal,  politically  and  socially, 
of  the  expert,  but  they  are  willing  in  many  instances  to 
admit  that  he  knows  his  special  business  better  than  they 
do.  The  success  of  such  men  as  Goethals  and  Gorgas 
with  the  Panama  Canal,  the  introduction  of  the  City 
Manager  into  many  American  city  governments,   the 


RECENT  TENDENCIES   IN   SOCIAL  REFORM  59 

establishment  of  Bureaus  of  Municipal  Research  and  of 
Legislative  Reference,  federal  and  state,  have  done  much 
to  fix  in  the  public  mind  the  desirability  of  turning  ex- 
pert work  over  to  expert  hands.  President  Wilson 's  war 
administration  has  stamped  the  principle  with  almost 
epoch-making  authority.  The  American  public  will  not 
soon  nor  easily  forget  that  men  like  Hoover,  Vanderlip, 
Davidson,  Edison,  Baruch,  and  Rosenwald  left  their  busi- 
ness at  the  country's  call  and  placed  their  expert  ability 
at  its  service.  The  reaction  upon  standards  of  adminis- 
tration cannot  fail  to  be  enormously  favorable. 

Heretofore,  American  government  has  suffered  far 
less  from  sheer  dishonesty  than  from  the  general  obses- 
sion that  every  American  was  a  Jack-of-all-trades  and 
consequently  was  fitted  to  turn  his  hand  to  anything 
from  prison  warden  or  labor  commissioner  to  secretary 
of  state  or  ambassador  to  the  Court  of  St.  James.  Hence 
the  tendency  to  extend  governmental  control  over  wider 
social  areas,  particularly  as  accelerated  by  the  war,  must 
carry  with  it  an  extension  of  means  for  training  expert 
public  servants  in  the  problems  of  concrete  administra- 
tion, along  with  the  demand  for  better  means  of  checking 
up  the  honesty  of  public  officials.  Unless  the  ebb  tide 
of  war  leaves  a  deposit  of  a  leisured  expert  governing 
bureaucracy  which  refuses  to  return  to  its  shops  and  its 
factories,  men  must  be  educated  to  fill  their  places.  Such 
schemes,  therefore,  as  the  University  Training  Schools 
for  Public  Service  proposed  by  certain  American  political 
scientists,  economists  and  sociologists  are  welcomed  as 
harbingers  of  a  higher  level  of  goverimiental  efl&ciency. 
And  the  further  fact  that  several  universities  have  train- 
ing schools  for  social  and  civic  work,  business  adminis- 
tration, and  consular  service  adds  to  our  hope  that  gov- 
ernment may  became  a  real  vocation. 

It  is  at  this  point  that  the  path  of  constructive 
criticism  joins  that  of  expert  service.  Sidney  Webb, 
the  great  English  Fabian,  discovered  long  ago  that  mere 


6o  THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

agitation  for  social  change  would  accomplish  little  or 
nothing  except  the  ultimate  destruction  of  the  agitator 
unless  it  were  coupled  up  with  definite  training  in  ad- 
ministration. Hence  the  founding  of  the  London  School 
of  Economic  and  Political  Science  and  the  entrance  of 
many  young  liberals  and  socialists  into  government 
employ. 

But,  finally,  the  expert  leader  can  do  little  without  the 
support  of  an  intelligent  public,  able  at  least  to  compre- 
hend what  the  expert  is  driving  at.  That  means  at  bot- 
tom trained,  just,  sound  public  opinion.  How  can  we 
get  it?  We  shall  have  in  the  long  run  to  depend  upon  the 
public  school.  To  be  precise  and  perhaps  a  bit  dogmatic 
we  shall  have  to  socialize  more  completely  the  public 
schools.  I  do  not  mean  that  we  shall  turn  them  into 
factories  or  shops,  nor  make  them  over  into  debating 
societies  for  the  discussion  of  social  problems.  But  we 
should  organize  them — teachers,  students,  curriculum — 
in  such  fashion  that  the  product  of  the  public  school 
shall  at  least  know  how  to  recognize  a  social  problem 
without  being  knocked  on  the  head,  and  shall  have  some 
knowledge  about  how  to  form  an  intelligent  opinion  upon 
public  affairs.  We  have  made  a  beginning  by  introduc- 
ing economic  and  sociological  subjects  into  some  high 
schools.  But  that  is  only  a  feeble  and  sporadic  effort. 
We  must  extend  the  movement  to  include  every  high 
school.  We  need  not  stop  with  the  bare  adding  of  such 
subjects  to  the  curriculum.  Why  should  not  every  sub- 
ject, whether  mathematics  or  language  or  geography  or 
history,  be  given  a  social  orientation,  both  in  content  and 
method  of  intruction?  And  why  wait  till  the  high  school, 
which  so  far  is  closed  to  nine-tenths  of  American  youth? 
I  stand  squarely  for  introducing  the  child  to  social  prob- 
lems the  minute  he  enters  the  receiving  class  in  the  ele- 
mentary school.  North  Dakota  has  already  worked  out 
a  sort  of  syllabus  for  this  kind  of  teaching.  What  this 
frontier  State  has  done  every  State  and  every  school 


RECENT  TENDENCIES  IN   SOCIAL  REFORM  6 1 

must  do  if  the  paths  which  social  vision  has  marked  out 
as  the  paths  of  progress  are  actually  to  lead  to  a  higher 
social  level  and  not  into  the  morass  of  futile  palavering. 
These  three  lines  of  tendency  all  represent,  at  their 
best,  a  distinct  gain  in  the  direction  of  putting  public 
affairs  upon  a  more  nearly  scientific  basis.  Criticism  to 
become  really  constructive  must  ground  itself  upon  the 
facts  elicited  by  scientific  investigation;  and  this  seems 
to  be  what  is  actually  happening  as  the  result  of  new 
methods  of  social  research  and  pubHcity.  Social  control 
and  community  welfare  through  exercise  of  the  police 
power  have  been  successful  just  in  so  far  as  they  con- 
formed to  scientific  fact  on  ihe  one  hand  and  took  on  the 
character  of  broad,  flexible,  scientific  experiment  on  the 
other.  They  have  failed  in  so  far  as  they  have  played 
traitor  to  the  scientific  spirit  and  prostituted  themselves 
to  the  doctrinaire.  The  tendency  toward  utilizing 
trained  and  expert  service  in  community  affairs  is  a 
triumph  for  the  scientific  spirit  and  the  methods  of 
science.  It  is  perfectly  clear,  too,  that  if  social  workers 
are  to  be  dependable  partners  in  the  approaching  social 
reorganization  which  these  lines  of  tendency  plainly 
suggest  they  must  not  only  equip  themselves  with  some 
such  philosophy  as  we  have  already  sketched  out,  but 
must  also  catch  the  spirit  and  the  outlook  of  science  in 
every  aspect  of  their  craft.  It  behooves  us,  therefore, 
to  examine  more  closely  the  strands  of  relationship  be- 
tween science  and  social  work. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 


Science  and  the  Scientific  Spirit  are  big  words.  Be- 
cause they  are  so  pregnant  and  talismanic,  they  must 
be  used  with  caution.  Social  work,  likewise,  has  entered 
the  popular  vocabulary  of  key  phrases,  and  apparently 
covers  a  multitude  of  both  sins  and  virtues.  Its  very 
vagueness  prompts  the  attempt  to  couple  it  with  the 
concept,  science,  in  the  effort  to  determine  whether  it 
is  a  mere  wraith  or  a  good,  sound  structure  of  flesh  and 
bone.  Even  the  most  superficial  acquaintance  with 
much  of  what  passes  for  social  work  leaves  one  with  such 
a  taste  in  his  mouth  that  he  turns  almost  instinctively 
away  and  is  ready  to  catch  at  any  phrase  which  promises 
relief.  "Science"  promises  such  comfort  and  relief  from 
loose  thinking,  looser  talk,  and  the  wasting  of  great 
reservoirs  of  valuable  energy.  It  smacks  of  challenge 
and  a  trial  of  strength.  In  this  chapter,  borrowing  an 
analogy  from  engineering,  I  propose  to  apply  the  concept 
of  science  and  scientific  method  to  test  the  "strength  of 
materials  "  in  what  we  commonly  call  social  work.  That 
it  is  worth  while  you  may  infer  from  the  fact  that  the 
number  of  social  workers,  professional  and  amateur, 
has  grown  prodigiously  in  the  last  ten  years,  and  con- 
tinues to  grow  apace.  New  York  City  alone  claims  a 
force  of  four  thousand  paid  social  workers.  London 
school  authorities  not  long  ago  issued  a  call  for  seven 
thousand  volunteer  school  and  home  visitors.  The 
American  Red  Cross  asks  for  several  regiments  of  Home 
Service  workers  for  its  Civilian  Relief  department  and 

62 


THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK  63 

has  developed  institutes  for  training  them  in  twenty-five 
centers.  There  are  some  twoscore  of  social  workers' 
clubs,  under  various  names,  in  the  United  States.  AH 
the  broad-gauge  colleges  and  universities,  together  with 
schools  of  philanthropy  and  social  work,  aim  at  turning 
out  every  year  a  new  battalion  of  men  and  women  de- 
voted to  social  work.  What  constitutes  social  work  and 
a  social  worker  cannot  then  be  turned  aside  as  a  mere 
academic  question. 

Social  work  as  we  know  it  to-day  was  born  of  a  sense 
of  responsibility  to  society.  So  ran  the  report  of  the 
Committee  on  Education  for  Social  Work  at  a  recent 
National  Conference  of  Charities.  But  that  statement 
does  not  bring  us  very  far  on  the  road  to  knowing  what 
social  work  really  is.  Is  it  charity?  Is  it  social  reform? 
Is  it  professional  doing  good  and  earning  one 's  Hving  by 
it?  Is  it  doing  for  other  people  what  they  cannot  do  for 
themselves?  Is  it  ''an  effort  to  perfect  social  relation- 
ships" ?  If  you  applied  for  membership  in  a  Social 
Workers '  Club  and  gave  any  or  all  of  these  qualifications, 
would  you  be  accepted?  Nobody  knows.  At  any  rate, 
the  definitions  they  imply  are  vague  enough.  If  you 
turn,  say  to  that  great  decennial  encyclopedia,  the 
United  States  Census,  you  will  be  plunged  into  even 
deeper  darkness,  for  in  it  you  will  find  social  workers 
pigeonholed  with  such  semiprofessional  pursuits  as  ab- 
stractors, notaries,  justices  of  the  peace,  fortune  tellers, 
hypnotists,  spiritualists,  etc.  (sic!),  healers  (except 
physicians  and  surgeons),  officials  of  lodges,  societies, 
etc.,  religious  workers,  keepers  of  penal  institutions, 
theatrical  owners,  managers,  and  officials. 

Of  course,  from  the  standpoint  of  ethics,  social  work 
is  simply  responding  to  the  urge  of  that  conscience  which 
W.  K.  Clifford  called  "the  voice  of  Man  within  us,  com- 
manding us  to  work  for  Man."  And  from  the  standpoint 
of  sociological  theory,  all  work  is  social  because  man 
is  inexorably  social  to  the  core  and  must  always  work 


64  THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

for  or  with  or  against  somebody  else.  He  cannot  work 
in  a  social  vacuum.  But  all  work  is  a  sum  of  social  pluses 
and  minuses,  when  measured  by  its  contribution  to  so- 
cial welfare.  Some  kinds  of  work  may  yield  us  zero  or 
even  less.  For  example:  a  notorious  thief  of  Milan  once 
said  to  Lombroso,  "I  do  not  rob;  I  merely  take  from  the 
rich  their  superfluities."  And  a  brigand  chief  said  to  his 
judges:  "God  has  sent  us  on  the  earth  to  punish  the 
avaricious  and  the  rich.  We  are  a  kind  of  divine  scourge." 
It  is  evident  that  these  men  were  doing  social  work,  but 
rather  of  the  negative  sort  and  certainly  beyond  the  pale 
of  common  social  approval..  Again,  motherhood  is  fun- 
damental social  work,  but  many  minuses  enter  into  it; 
many  children  would  better  have  remained  unborn,  for 
they  become  social  liabiHties  in  the  shape  of  criminals 
and  defectives.  Scientific  agriculture  and  invention  in 
general  are  unquestionably  forms  of  social  work,  in  the 
sense  that  they  contribute  to  the  material  basis  upon 
which  all  social  hfe  on  this  planet  must  rest.  But  the 
invention  may  be  turned  to  uses  wholly  destructive, 
hence  may  yield  by-products  fatal  to  human  welfare. 
Dynamite  may  bore  a  railroad  tunnel  and  blast  the  foun- 
dation pits  for  a  temple  or,  dropped  from  a  Zeppelin,  rend 
in  pieces  innocent  women  and  children.  But  what  about 
giving  Christmas  baskets  to  the  poor?  Is  that  not  nearer 
real  social  work?  Take  this  case  and  see  if  you  find  any 
minuses:  A  family  in  a  neighboring  city  received  twelve 
baskets  of  food  at  the  Christmas  season.  The  Good 
Fellows  or  other  well-wishers  had  done  their  work 
thoroughly.  The  head  of  the  family  threw  up  his  job  at 
once.  About  the  first  of  the  following  February  he  went 
to  the  United  Charities  office  and  asked  that  the  pleasant 
episode  be  repeated.  This  was  social  work,  but  it  is  an 
open  question  whether  in  such  cases  bombs  are  really 
much  worse  than  baskets. 

None  of  these  examples  of  social  work  satisfy.    None 
are  illuminating  or  convincing.    But  I  still  beHeve  there 


THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK  65 

is  such  a  thing.  It  must,  however,  be  stated  in  broader 
terms.  And  it  can  be.  A  bulletin  of  the  New  York 
School  of  Philanthropy  defines  social  work  as  "any  form 
of  persistent  and  deliberate  effort  to  improve  living  or 
working  conditions  in  the  community,  or  to  relieve, 
diminish,  or  prevent  distress,  whether  due  to  weakness 
of  character  or  to  pressure  of  external  circumstances." 
We  might  go  a  step  further  or  add  a  touch  of  literary 
varnish,  and  say  that  social  work  ought  to  stand  for 
organizing  scientifically  the  forces,  personal  and  material 
of  a  community  in  such  a  way  as  to  eliminate  waste  and 
friction,  and  to  raise  progressively  the  capacity  of  every 
member  for  productivity,  service,  and  joy  in  Hfe. 

But,  you  may  say,  that  is  simply  applied  or  practical 
sociology.  That,  to  my  way  of  thinking,  is  precisely  what 
it  is;  and  that  is  why  "social  work"  and  the  "scientific 
spirit"  must  always  be  linked  in  theory  and  practice. 
Hence  the  field  of  social  work  is  broad,  but  at  the  same 
time  may  be  pretty  definitely  laid  out  for  purposes  of 
planting  and  cultivating  special  crops.  The  three  chief 
crops  I  find  to  be,  first,  the  spread  of  socialized  intelli- 
gence; second,  alleviative  and  remedial  work  on  behalf 
of  the  subnormal  or  handicapped  members  of  the  com- 
munity; third,  organized  prevention  against  adverse  and 
depressive  forces  in  the  community. 

This  does  not  mean  that  for  each  of  these  crops  we  must 
have  a  separate  type  of  "social  worker."  Indeed,  the 
opposite  ought  to  be  true.  Every  juvenile  court  judge, 
or  visiting  nurse,  or  friendly  visitor  should  combine  the 
three  functions  of  education,  relief,  and  prevention.  But 
for  purposes  of  concentration  and  economy  of  effort,  a 
division  of  labor  may  be  necessary.  Yet  such  a  division 
ought  to  leave  room  for  each  t3^e  of  worker  to  play  into 
the  other's  hand.  Those  of  us  who  are  working  to  edu- 
cate the  public  to  its  social  duty  and  to  bring  about 
peaceful  readjustments  in  social  institutions,  need  the 
information  which  only  the  worker  with  the  imder  dogs 


66  IHE   SCIENTIFIC    SPIRIT  AND    SOCIAL   WORK 

can  give.  And  the  friend  of  the  under  dogs  needs  the 
breadth  of  view  begotten  of  contact  with  the  worker 
engaged  in  removing  adverse  conditions  through  pre- 
ventive social  legislation.    And  so  on  back  and  forth. 

II 

We  may  assume,  then,  with  considerable  assurance 
that  social  work  not  only  is,  but  sets  for  itself  a  huge  and 
intricate  problem.  Whether  it  is  a  fully  fledged  pro- 
fession or  only  a  profession  in  the  makmg  is  of  no  im- 
portance to  this  present  discussion.  The  real  point  is  that 
the  scientific  spirit  is  necessary  to  social  work  whether  it  is 
a  real  profession  or  only  a  go-between  craft.  The  cat  is 
now  out  of  the  bag,  but  where  has  she  jumped?  No 
matter,  but  the  mere  opening  of  the  bag  starts  a  throng 
of  questions.  Chief  of  these  I  find  in  my  own  mind  to  be: 
why  do  people  want  to  do  social  work,  particularly  if  it 
is  so  hard  and  so  comprehensive?  Is  it,  perhaps,  as  the 
cynically  minded  claim,  because  of  the  "supply  of  the 
unfortunate  to  exercise  their  virtue  on"?  Or  because 
they  "conceive  service  as  a  kind  of  exploitation  of  mental 
inferiority,  and  so  find  a  moral  satisfaction  in  the  thought 
of  the  intellectual  poor  whom  they  will  have  with  them 
alway"?  Are  we  absolutely  sure  that  this  is  cynicism, 
or  may  it  not  be  genuine  moral  probing?  Perhaps,  how- 
ever, I  had  better  put  the  question  this  way:  How  can 
you  get  people  to  do  social  work? 

Back  of  all  true  social  work  must  stand  the  impulse  to 
serve.  But  whence  is  it  to  come?  It  is  natural,  you  say. 
I  grant  that  some  psychologists  claim  we  all  have  an  in- 
stinct for  seeing  others  well  off.  That  was  what  Clifford 
meant  by  "the  voice  of  Man  within  us,  commanding  us 
to  work  for  Man."  But  unfortunately  there  are  other 
voices  within  us  commanding  us  to  steal  from,  and  lie  to, 
and  exploit,  and  otherwise  abuse  our  fellow  men.  Our 
instincts  never  run  along  a  smooth,  even  road  in  one  di- 


THE    SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT   AND    SOCIAL   WORK  67 

rection.  They  cut  across  and  jostle  each  other  fiercely. 
Instinct  can  never  be  swallowed  raw  as  an  explanation  of 
noble  or  even  fairly  decent  human  conduct.  It  must 
always  be  liberally  salted  with  discipline  and  education 
before  taking. 

Experience  and  training  have  shown  men  that  some 
form  of  mutual  service  contributes  to  social  and  personal 
weU-being.  The  original  instinct  to  serve,  however,  had 
to  be  brought  out  through  a  long  process  of  holding  the  lid 
down  on  other  rival  instincts.  Mere  instinct  and  emo- 
tion are  blind  and  unsafe  guides  to  conduct.  That  is 
why  so  many  of  us  land  in  the  ditch  with  our  benevolent 
schemes.  That  is  why  I  am  so  suspicious  of  appeals  to 
act  on  impulse.  That  is  why  I  deplore  such  senti- 
mental calls  as  appeared  in  the  press  on  February  29, 
1 9 16.  We  were  urged  by  the  president  of  a  group  of 
benevolent  women  to  gain  a  day.  How?  In  her 
own  words:  "A  chance  will  come  to  every  one  to  do 
something  charitable  that  day.  Let  us  do  as  our  first 
impulse  tells  us.  For  once  let's  not  consult  what  we  call 
our  'better  judgment '  nor  use  'scientific  charity '  in  what 
we  do  for  others.  Let's  do  more  sunshine  and  less  char- 
ity." Such  talk  is  simply  the  call  to  "go  on  the  loose." 
It  is  precisely  the  same  psychological  path  that  impels 
men  to  get  drunk  or  to  fly  at  each  others'  throats  in  war. 
Civilization  is  the  result  of  the  illuminated  and  disciplined 
will.  There  is  no  unerring  instinct  to  do  good.  To  de- 
pend upon  mere  feeling  or  impulse  is  to  revert  to  nature, 
to  eighteenth-century  mythology,  Rousseau,  and  the  cult 
of  the  "happy  savage." 

But  if  the  impulse  to  serve  is  not  instinctive,  shall  we 
say  it  must  be  religious?  Is  it  not  the  dynamic  side  of 
faith?  Recall  that  famous  chapter  on  the  nature  and 
fruits  of  faith  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews.  Abel  and 
Abraham  and  Moses,  Joseph,  David,  the  prophets  and 
many  another  worthy  "who  through  faith  subdued  king- 
doms, wrought  righteousness,  obtained  promises,  stopped 


68  THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

the  mouths  of  lions,  quenched  the  violence  of  fire,  escaped 
the  edge  of  the  sword,  out  of  weakness  were  made  strong, 
waxed  valiant  in  fight,  turned  to  flight  the  armies  of  the 
aliens,"  were  impelled  to  service  through  religious  fer- 
vor. But  like  many  other  social  workers  they  seem  to 
have  failed  of  their  full  reward — if  we  may  judge  from  the 
somewhat  cynical  comment  of  the  narrator  of  their 
trials.  The  religious  motive  has  always  been  one  of  the 
strong  forces  back  of  the  impulse  to  social  amelioration. 
Hebrew  and  Chinese  and  Hindu  sacred  texts  teach  it. 
Christianity  fostered  certain  types  of  charity.  The  cal- 
endar of  Christian  saints  is  redolent  with  them.  Not  a 
Httle  of  the  best  in  so-called  organized  philanthropy  (both 
spirit  and  methods)  is  traceable  to  the  work  of  St.  Vincent 
de  Paul.  The  preaching  of  such  men  as  Charming  in  New 
England  during  the  thirties  and  forties  of  the  last  cen- 
tury fed  the  new  tide  of  humanitarianism  which  brought 
us  broader  and  more  decent  care  of  the  afflicted,  partic- 
ularly the  defectives  and  law  breakers. 

But  neither  instinct  nor  religion  is  sufficient;  neither 
confers  capacity,  necessarily.  Vincent  de  Paul's  great 
work  may  be  said  to  have  begun  by  recognition  of  this 
principle.  You  remember  his  first  case:  a  benevolent 
lady  had  asked  him  to  recommend  to  his  parishioners  a 
certain  needy  family.  He  did  so  at  the  morning  service. 
In  the  afternoon  he  visited  the  family  himself  only  to 
find  them  already  almost  overwhelmed  with  gifts  of  food 
and  money.  "Behold  noble  but  ill-regulated  charity," 
said  the  saint,  and  set  to  work  at  once  to  make  the  benev- 
olent impulse  effective  through  vision  and  organization. 
That  was  the  scientific  spirit.  Again,  Channing's  preach- 
ing was  not  the  only  spring  that  started  Dorothea  Dix 
upon  her  marvelous  crusade  on  behalf  of  the  insane  in 
our  country.  For  years,  notable  doctors  had  been  im- 
porting the  ideas  of  Pinel  from  France  and  Tuke  from 
England.  And  for  three  years  Miss  Dix  studied  these 
new,  scientific  methods  of  treatment  for  the  mentally  de- 


THE    SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT   AND    SOCIAL   WORK  69 

fective.  It  was  this  new,  precise  knowledge  that  gave 
some  solid  backing  to  her  fervid  moral  enthusiasm. 
Her  science  guided  her  religion  and  made  it  efficient.  In- 
deed, I  am  not  sure  but  that  it  was  science  that  drove  her 
to  the  work  and  rehgion  which  served  as  ally. 

At  any  rate,  science  does  create  the  will  to  serve.  The 
new  knowledge  of  heredity  has  stimulated  a  whole  tribe 
of  eugenists,  however  mistaken  they  may  prove  to  be. 
The  more  scientific  the  art  of  healing  becomes,  the  more  it 
becomes  permeated  with  a  sense  of  community  duty  and 
service.  The  newer  developments  of  economic  science  and 
sociology  have  impelled  us  toward  conservation  of  natural 
and  human  resources,  labor  legislation,  health  and  sani- 
tary work,  protection  of  children,  control  of  industry  for 
social  ends.  Science  yields  place  to  no  other  source  of 
enthusiasm  for  social  amelioration.  And  science  has 
her  heroes.  It  would  be  easy  to  write  the  litany  of  scien- 
tific martyrs — Priestly,  Lyell,  T^ndall,  Darwin,  Huxley, 
Reed,  Laveran,  IVIanson,  Ross,  Lazear,  Carroll,  and 
a  hundred  others,  who  were  stoned  and  sawn  asunder, 
were  tempted,  destitute,  afflicted,  tormented,  slain,  like 
their  brethren  of  religious  faith. 

But  the  glory  of  science  is  that  to  enthusiasm  it  adds 
anewquaUty.  Let  me  illustrate:  The  impulse  to  serve, 
I  said,  must  be  present;  otherwise  there  is  no  motive 
power.  But  the  impulse  alone  is  not  enough.  Volunteers 
by  the  million  would  never  make  an  army.  An  army  of 
raw  recruits  is  actually  worse  than  no  army — it  is  in  the 
way;  it  has  to  be  transported,  it  clogs  the  service;  it  has 
to  be  fed,  and  takes  food  from  abler  mouths;  it  gets  in  the 
way  of  trained  men;  its  own  fears  may  stampede  the  reg- 
ulars into  rout  and  confusion.  Only  training — exacting, 
rigorous  training — can  make  over  the  mob  of  recruits 
from  a  liability  into  an  asset.  That  training  is  military 
science.  Likewise,  the  hundreds  of  volunteers  respond- 
ing to  the  call  to  enlist  in  the  social-service  army  against 
needless  want  and  misery  must  be  trained  lest  they  re- 


7©  THE   SCIENTIFIC    SPIRIT  AND    SOCIAL  WORK 

main  mere  cumberers  of  the  ground.  That  is  what  I  mean 
by  the  application  of  the  scientific  spirit  to  social  work. 
The  new  quality  which  science  adds  to  the  impulse  to 
serve  is  ordered  intelligence,  the  discipline  of  knowledge. 
*'If  science  does  not  produce  love  it  is  insufficient,"  wrote 
Amiel.  I  believe  it  not  only  enlarges  the  area  of  man's 
sympathy — that  is,  his  love — but  makes  it  effective. 
"Scientific"  is  not  the  logical  opposite  of  "loving"  or 
"warm"  or  "hearty"  or  "brotherly";  the  real  antipode 
of  these  qualities  is  mechanical  routine. 

Ill 

Perhaps  we  should  pause  to  run  down  to  its  lair  the 
fearful  word,  science,  and  say  exactly  what  we  mean  by 
the  scientific  spirit.  Huxley  said,  "Science  is  nothing 
but  trained  and  organized  common  sense."  Isn't  that  a 
good  deal?  A  trained  and  organized  mind  in  contrast 
with  a  mental  scrap  bag;  a  disciplined  army  as  against 
a  motley,  rambling  mob.  Science  in  the  most  generally 
accepted  sense,  like  humor,  is  the  detection  of  relation- 
ships; it  is  the  relating  of  cause  to  effect.  This  means  two 
things:  first,  that  the  scientific  mind  is  always  full  of  prob- 
lems; it  never  takes  things  for  granted;  it  never  contents 
itself  with  fatalistically  and  complacently  accepting 
effects.  This  means,  it  is  evident,  in  the  second  place, 
that  everything  is  caused  by  something  else.  Shake- 
speare makes  Pisanio  in  "Cymbeline"  say  that  "fortune 
brings  in  some  boats  that  are  not  steered."  Science  denies 
that  absolutely  and  irrevocably,  if  the  lack  of  steering 
implies  that  ships  just  wander  into  port  moved  by  no 
forces  but  chance.  The  spirit  of  science  was  nobly  ex- 
pressed by  Matthew  Arnold  in  the  couplet: 

"Yet  they,  believe  me,  who  await 

No  gifts  from  Chance  have  conquered  Fate." 

The  main  business  of  science  is  to  rid  the  world  of  chance 
and  luck.    Our  forefathers  charged  their  sickness  and  pov- 


THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT   AND   SOCIAL  WORK  7 1 

erty  and  pain  to  bad  luck,  hostile  ghosts,  an  angry  god, 
or  a  fickle  goddess.  Take  down  your  Shakespeare  Con- 
cordance and  see  how  many  hundred  times  his  creations 
tallc  of  fortune,  luck,  chance.  Listen  to  the  uncompli- 
mentary, even  vile  names  they  call  her — crooked,  blind, 
skittish,  a  foe,  a  strumpet,  and  worse.  Remember  that 
all  primitive  philosophy,  politics,  and  religion  are  based 
in  no  slight  degree  upon  luck  and  magical  devices  for  con- 
trolling it.  Even  now  men  persist  in  the  same  unflatter- 
ing concept  of  Providence  by  inserting  in  their  contracts 
exemptions  from  responsibility  in  certain  business  con- 
tingencies involving  what  they  are  pleased  to  call  "acts 
of  God."  Earthquakes  and  fierce  tempests  at  sea  are  acts 
of  God.  Poverty  is  one  of  the  mysterious  ways  in  which 
Providence  works  his  wonders  to  perform.  Pestilence  is 
a  divine  scourge.  War,  God  judging  the  nations.  Now, 
modern  science  is  vastly  too  respectful,  too  devout,  too 
well  informed  to  perpetuate  such  childish  attempts  to 
connect  effect  and  cause.  Therefore  in  ridding  the  world 
of  chance,  it  works  in  two  ways — critical  and  construc- 
tive. Huxley  has  phrased  both  these  aspects  in  his  let- 
ters. In  one  he  says,  "Among  public  benefactors,  we 
reckon  him  who  explodes  an  old  error  as  next  in  rank  to 
him  who  discovers  new  truth."  On  the  constructive  side 
he  writes,  "To  be  accurate  in  observation  and  clear  in 
description  is  the  first  step  towards  good  scientific  work." 
In  sum,  the  work  of  science  is  to  get  at  truth;  not  only 
at  facts,  but  at  the  vital  relationships  between  facts. 

Science  does  not  claim  to  have  complete  knowledge  of 
the  truth  or  to  have  established  perfect  order  out  of 
chaos  in  this  world.  It  is  less  an  accomplished  fact  than 
an  attitude.  Professor  Sumner  suggests  this  in  his  defini- 
tion of  science  as  "knowledge  of  reality  acquired  by  meth- 
ods which  are  established  in  the  confidence  of  men  whose 
occupation  it  is  to  investigate  truth."  Hence,  in  con- 
necting science  with  social  work,  our  aim  is  not  so  much 
immediate  results  as  an  attitude  of  mind;  for,  as  Huxley 


72  THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

pointed  out,  "The  scientific  spirit  is  of  more  value  than 
its  products,  and  irrationally  held  truths  may  be  more 
harmful  than  reasoned  errors,"  This  does  not  mean,  of 
course,  that  the  scientist  does  not  strive  to  know  the 
greatest  possible  amount  of  truth.  He  is  no  mere  dab- 
bler or  dilettante.  Scientific  truth  is  a  serious  business 
and  cannot  be  achieved  as  you  order  goldfish  or  libra- 
ries or  art  galleries.  You  may  buy  a  college  degree  or  the 
God-bless-you's  of  a  poor  family,  but  you  cannot  buy  the 
scientific  attitude.  Science,  like  the  wisdom  of  Solomon, 
is  above  rubies  and  eludes  all  but  the  resolute,  serious 
hearts. 

Carlyle,  in  spite  of  his  frequent  wrongheadedness,  was 
one  of  the  best  friends  to  social  work  raised  up  in  the  last 
century ;  not  by  the  institutions  he  founded  or  the  tech- 
nique of  family  rehabilitation  he  worked  out,  but  by  his 
unflinching  determination  to  see  through  the  social  shams 
of  his  time  and  to  purge  our  systems,  and  his  own,  of  cant 
or  driveling.  Such  an  acid  test  transforms  mere  vague 
opinion  into  dynamic  opinion.  It  makes  for  the  sci- 
entific spirit  by  refusing  absolutely  to  allow  any  institu- 
tion or  idea  or  practice  to  take  refuge  behind  some- 
body's mere  say-so  or  to  be  frightened  by  the  cry  that 
it  is  old  or  sacred  or  in  the  nature  of  things  and  there- 
fore not  to  be  molested  by  mere  man. 

The  scientific  spirt  refuses  to  call  a  hope  or  a  longing  a 
proved  fact,  no  matter  how  urgent  that  longing  or  that 
hope  may  be.  I  may  long  to  see  parole  work  done  with  a 
hundred  per  cent  efficiency;  but  that  does  not  justify  me 
in  publishmg  that  ninety-five  per  cent  of  my  paroled  men 
"make  good"  after  leaving  the  prison  gate.  Much  as  I 
might  have  wished  for  a  better  showing,  I  was  never  able 
as  a  probation  officer  to  claim  more  than  one-half  or  two- 
thirds  of  my  cases  as  successful.  I  may  abhor  the  sight  of 
painted  women  selling  their  bodies  on  the  streets,  but  that 
does  not  justify  me  in  saying  that  mere  repressive  legisla- 
tion orpolicemen  will  wipe  out  prostitution.   Science  bases 


THE    SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT   AND    SOCIAL   WORK  73 

its  hopes  on  facts.  It  refuses  to  rest  its  case  on  the  lead- 
ings of  mere  temperament.  Huxley  said,  "Science  seems 
to  me  to  teach  in  the  highest  and  strongest  manner  the 
great  truth  which  is  embodied  in  the  Christian  concep- 
tion of  entire  surrender  to  the  will  of  God.  Sit  down  be- 
fore fact  as  a  little  child,  be  prepared  to  give  up  every 
preconceived  notion,  follow  humbly  wherever  and  to 
whatever  abysses  nature  leads,  or  you  shall  learn  noth- 
ing. .  .  My  business  is  to  teach  my  aspirations  to  con- 
form themselves  to  fact,  not  to  try  and  make  facts  har- 
monize with  my  aspirations." 

There  are  several  other  concrete  marks  of  the  scien- 
tific spirit  which  should  be  considered.  It  is  broad,  tol- 
erant, earnest,  imaginative,  enthusiastic,  but  poised  and 
self-controlled.  It  is  not  impatient  of  contradiction  and 
criticism  given  honestly  and  sincerely.  It  is  fearless, 
truthful,  teachable.  It  is  able  to  withstand  mob  mind, 
sentimentality,  sensationalism,  and  petty  partisanship. 
It  does  not  deny  that  a  thing  exists  merely  because  it  is 
not  easily  seen;  but  it  refuses  to  fudge  intelligence  and  the 
moral  nature  by  claiming  to  see  something  before  it 
really  is  seen.  It  also  declines  to  think  "the  difficulties 
of  disproving  a  thing  as  good  as  direct  evidence  in  its 
favor." 

Finally,  the  scientific  spirit  means  generosity,  fellow- 
ship, and  hearty  cooperation  untainted  by  jealousy. 
Witness,  for  example,  the  cordial  feeling  between  Darwin 
and  A.  R.  Wallace.  Wallace  always  spoke  of  the  "Dar- 
winian theory"  although,  since  he  was  the  codiscoverer 
of  natural  selection,  it  might  with  equal  justice  have  been 
called  the  "Darwin- Wallace  theory"  or  the  "Wallace 
theory."  Likewise  Darwin,  with  fine  generosity,  recog- 
nizing that  Wallace's  splendid  contributions  to  natural 
science  brought  him  little  financial  return,  set  in  motion 
a  plan  for  securing  a  Civil  List  pension  for  Wallace,  who 
was  at  the  time  nearly  sixty.  Huxley  was  equally  gener- 
ous and  enthusiastic.    He  lent  his  heartiest  support  and 


74  THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL   WORK 

was  able  a  few  weeks  later  to  hurrah  over  the  success  of 
the  plan.  A  similar  bit  of  generosity  occurs  in  Huxley's 
undertaking  the  task  of  writing  a  chapter  on  the  work  of 
his  old  opponent,  Sir  Richard  Owen,  for  the  latter's  bio- 
graphy. As  a  final  instance  let  me  cite  the  generosity  of 
eighteen  of  Huxley's  scientific  friends  who  in  1873  placed 
£2,100  in  the  bank  and  informed  him  that  he  was  forth- 
with to  take  a  vacation  for  his  health. 

It  is  this  fine  spirit  of  cooperation,  according  to  H.  G. 
Wells,  that  has  made  modern  science.  "The  whole  dif- 
ference of  modern  scientific  research  from  that  of  the 
Middle  Ages,"  he  says,  "the  secret  of  its  immense  suc- 
cesses, lies  in  its  collective  character,  in  the  fact  that 
every  fruitful  experiment  is  published,  every  new  dis- 
covery of  relationship  explained.  In  a  sense,  scientific 
research  is  a  triumph  over  natural  instinct,  over  that 
mean  instinct  that  makes  men  secretive,  that  makes  a 
man  keep  knowledge  to  himself,  and  use  it  slyly  to  his 
own  advantage.  The  training  of  a  scientific  man  is  a 
training  in  what  an  illiterate  lout  would  despise  as  a 
weakness,  it  is  a  training  in  blabbing,  in  blurting  things 
out,  in  telling  just  as  plainly  as  possible  and  as  soon  as 
possible  what  it  is  he  has  found.  To  '  keep  shut '  and 
bright-eyed  and  to  score  advantages,  that  is  the  wisdom 
of  the  common  stuff  of  humanity  yet.  To  science  it  is  a 
crime.  The  noble  practice  of  that  noble  profession, 
medicine,  for  example,  is  to  condemn  as  a  quack  and  a 
rascal  every  man  who  uses  secret  remedies."  And  the 
same  spirit  must  animate  social  workers  if  they  are  to 
make  their  work  truly  scientific  and  really  professional. 

Most  professions,  whether  law,  medicine,  preaching, 
or  teaching,  begin  with  the  assumption  that  all  a  man 
needs  is  knack,  luck,  nerve,  and  persistent  industry. 
Their  professional  aims  are  at  first  usually  personal 
success  and  social  prestige.  But  as  they  become  per- 
meated with  the  scientific  spirit  they  rise  out  of  mere 
crafts,  and  change  both  their  aims  and  their  methods. 


THE    SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT   AND    SOCIAL   WORK  75 

The  community  spirit  and  a  professional  code  are  both 
cause  and  effect  of  their  improved  technique.  Social  work 
has  been  going  through  just  these  throes  of  development. 
Hence  it  is  ahnost  superfluous  to  ask  why  social  work 
should  take  on  the  character  of  science.  It  is  hardly  a 
question  of  may  or  may  not.  Rather,  should  we  say,  it 
is  a  matter  of  the  categorical  must. 

Is  it  shocking  to  declare  that  one  must  do  good  accord- 
ing to  scientific  rule?  The  highest  praise  accorded  to  Jesus 
of  Nazareth  is  that  he  went  about  doing  good.  Do  I  be- 
lieve he  did  it  "scientifically"?  I  do,  most  emphatically. 
For  the  good  is  always  relative,  and  to  choose  between  the 
good  and  the  best  demands  an  illuminated  and  disciplined 
intelligence.  A  very  considerable  section  of  Christendom 
to-day  beUeves  that  Jesus  was  the  most  scientific  person 
that  ever  trod  this  globe.  Science  made  his  good  work 
discriminative.  Since  so  many  people  in  the  world  still 
seem  to  fail  of  understanding  either  the  spirit  of  Chris- 
tianity or  the  spirit  of  science  it  may  not  prove  amiss  to 
elaborate  this  point.  An  unknown  correspondent  has 
taken  me  to  task  for  venturing  to  couple  Jesus  with  sci- 
entific thought.     She  writes: 

"  .  .  .1  am  studying  sociology  and  am  convinced  that 
it  is  an  indispensable  subject  to  one  who  would  work  effec- 
tively for  the  advancement  of  civilization.  I  find  myself 
so  puzzled  by  your  statements  concerning  Jesus  that  I  am 
impelled  to  ask  for  enlightenment.  I  class  myself  with 
the  not  unintelligent  middle  class  to  use  a  phrase  from 
the  New  Republic;  I  can  follow  Lester  F.  Ward,  Frankliu 
Giddings,  Albion  Small,  et  al.,  but  find  myself  unable  to 
reconcile  the  acceptance  of  Jesus  as  a  historical  character 
with  the  scientific  attitude.  Science  refutes  His  divinity 
and  history  fails  to  establish  the  claim  to  His  existence. 
Therefore,  your  introduction  of  Jesus  into  an  essay  ad- 
vocating the  scientific  spirit  is  either  evidence  of  the  in- 
sufficiency of  your  scientific  knowledge  or  of  the  insin- 
cerity of  your  presentation  of  that  knowledge.     I  do 


76  THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

not  wish  to  seem  harsh,  but  those  who  aspire  to  teach 
must  cheerfully  welcome  criticism,  that  they  may  orient 
themselves  before  they  act  as  a  compass  to  less  favored 
members  of  society." 

Since  this  letter  is  not  only  manifestly  sincere,  but  also 
rather  typical  of  a  considerable  body  of  dissident  thought 
it  demands  a  respectful  hearing. 

In  the  first  place  let  it  be  said  that  the  scientific  spirit 
does  "cheerfully  welcome  criticism."  A  modern  sociolo- 
gist insists  that  the  spirit  and  method  of  science  is  such 
that  no  idea  is  held  as  sacred.  Science,  said  Huxley, 
must  not  be  impatient  of  criticism.  "'Authorities,' 
'disciples,'  and  '  schools'  are  the  curse  of  science;  and  do 
more  to  interfere  with  the  work  of  the  scientific  spirit 
than  all  its  enemies."  Darwin  not  only  courted  the  dis- 
covery of  contrary  instances  to  his  favorite  generaliza- 
tions, but  even  made  a  practice  of  writing  down  any 
exceptions  he  noted  or  could  think  of  lest  they  be  for- 
gotten. Huxley  credits  Carlyle  with  having  stimulated 
the  scientific  attitude  by  insisting  upon  sincerity,  pro- 
bity, making  things  clear,  and  getting  rid  of  cant  and 
shams  of  all  sorts. 

Now,  then,  is  there  any  contradiction  of  this  attitude 
in  suggesting  that  Jesus  worked  scientifically?  Let  us 
remember  first  of  all  that  science  is  not  a  mass  of  facts 
but  an  organization  of  perceived  relationships  between 
them.  It  is  an  outlook,  an  attitude  of  mind,  a  method  of 
confronting  the  universe  and  wringing  truth  out  of  it. 
Moreover,  it  is  a  pyramid  resting  not  upon  a  base  of 
unshakable  fact  but  upon  an  apex  of  metaphysical  as- 
sumption. It  is  a  method  of  transfoiTtiing  mere  guess  or 
flabby  opinion  into  dynamic  understanding. 

Waiving  for  the  moment  any  question  of  the  historicity 
of  Jesus  or  the  authenticity  of  the  Christian  narrative, 
let  us  apply  these  tests  to  Jesus '  work  as  described  in  the 
gospels.  If  he  accomplished  the  works  credited  to  him 
or  spoke  the  words  ascribed  to  him  he  satisfies  the  tests. 


THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT   AND   SOCIAL  WORK  77 

For  in  the  first  place  he  emphasized  getting  at  truth — 
the  truth  that  sets  free.  Next,  he  used  the  scientific 
method  of  demonstration  by  successful  experiment.  He 
verified  his  fundamental  assumption  that  this  is  a  spir- 
itual world  by  inductive  methods,  Thus  he  passes  the 
test  of  scientific  consistency  by  living  and  demonstrating 
his  theory.  Again  he  did  his  work  openly;  there  was 
nothing  of  the  dark-room  charlatan  about  his  methods. 
He  would  be  more  at  home  in  a  laboratory  or  public 
clinic  than  with  the  astrologers  or  alchemists.  His 
science  was  enlarging  and  expansive,  not  the  pseudo- 
science  which  Wordsworth  satirized  as  demanding 

"That  we  should  pry  far  off  yet  be  unraised; 
That  we  should  pore,  and  dwindle  as  we  pore. 
Viewing  all  objects  unremittingly 
In  disconnection  dead  and  spiritless; 
And  still  dividing,  and  dividing  still, 
Break  down  all  grandeur,  still  unsatisfied 
With  the  perverse  attempt  while  littleness 
May  yet  become  more  little;  waging  thus 
An  impious  warfare  with  the  very  life 
Of  our  own  souls!" 

Finally,  Jesus  showed  the  true  scientific  spirit  by 
sharing  his  knowledge  and  his  methods.  He  taught  his 
disciples  how  to  heal  and  otherwise  demonstrate  his 
theories  of  life.  He  told  them  they  should  do  even  greater 
works  than  he  had  done.  His  followers  apparently  kept 
up  the  work  of  spiritual  healing  for  three  hundred  years. 
It  is  perhaps  superfluous  to  add  that  he  paid  the  famihar 
penalty  which  many  another  scientist  has  suffered  for  his 
faith.  Socrates,  Jesus,  Giordano  Bruno  are  all  members 
of  the  same  great  scientific  brotherhood,  having  passed 
through  the  same  grim  portal  of  martyrdom.  And  no 
more  in  the  one  case  than  in  the  other  does  the  question 
of  ''divinity"  figure.  That  is  a  problem  of  theology 
without  the  slightest  relevance  to  this  question  of  scien- 
tific attitude. 


78  THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

Now  we  come  to  the  problem  of  the  historicity  of 
Jesus,  or  if  you  prefer,  to  the  authenticity  of  the  Christian 
tradition.  But  does  it  make  any  difference  in  this  issue 
whether  any  such  person  called  Jesus  ever  lived  or  not? 
If  Professor  Drews  or  Mr.  J.  M.  Robertson  succeed  in 
demonstrating  that  Christ  is  simply  a  myth-comply,  a 
generic  name  for  a  cycle  of  Hellenic  and  Oriental  legends, 
or  if  the  gospel  narrative  be  set  aside  as  unhistorical  and 
inaccurate,  the  record  itself,  simply  as  a  human  document, 
remains  unimpeached.  For  if  not  Jesus,  nor  Matthew,  nor 
John,  nor  any  of  the  individuals  supposedly  concerned, 
then  somebody  else  manifested  the  spirit  and  maintained 
the  attitude  described  in  the  New  Testament  story.  It 
is  the  characteristic  attitude  and  not  the  particular 
personality  which  concerns  us  primarily.  For  is  it  not 
possible  to  reckon  and  reckon  profoundly  with  the  in- 
fluence of  even  a  legendary  character  like  Hercules  or 
Homer  or  Socrates  or  Barbarossa?  Nobody  knows 
whether  one  single  blind  Homer  or  a  hundred  wandering 
Greek  poets  wrote  the  "Iliad "  and  the  "Odyssey."  But 
nevertheless  we  talk  of  Homer 's  use  of  the  epithet,  of  his 
wonderful  powers  of  compact  description,  of  his  sense  of 
movement  and  color;  and  his  heroes  become  educational 
and  ethical  models.  We  know  of  the  hfe  and  death  of 
Socrates  largely  through  the  dramatic  dialogues  of  Plato; 
yet  his  character  has  stood  out  as  the  inspiration  to  gen- 
erations of  souls  struggling  with  the  problems  of  truth, 
justice,  and  immortality.  Was  he  a  man  or  only  a  dra- 
matic character  invented  by  Plato?  No  difference.  Like- 
wise with  William  Langland,  the  traditional  author  of 
"Piers  Plowman."  Professor  Manley  considers  that  this 
is  not  a  personal  but  a  dramatic  name  covering  several 
fourteenth-century  writers;  but  whether  or  not  there 
was  such  a  person  as  William  Langland  has  absolutely 
nothing  to  do  now  at  this  range  of  five  centuries  with  the 
effect  of  "Piers  Plowman"  as  the  fountain  source  of  a 
great  stream  of  social  protest  in  English  literature.    And 


THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK  79 

as  we  look  back  to  Jack  Cade  and  his  revolution  we  may 
be  pretty  sure  that  it  was  inspired  by  the  vision  of  Piers 
and  not  necessarily  by  the  visionary  poet  or  poets.  And 
who  wrote  Shakespeare?  Was  it  Bacon  or  Roger  Manners, 
fifth  Count  of  Rutland,  or  a  group  of  winebibbing  actors 
or  one  William  Shakespeare  of  Avon  himself.  Quite 
evidently  in  Shakespeare's  own  words  "the  play's  the 
thing"  and  Olivia  or  Portia,  Lear  or  Macbeth,  Dogberry, 
Bassanio,  Hamlet,  Romeo,  and  Brutus  are  just  the  same 
wonderful  and  stimulating  creations  regardless  of  their 
Uterary  paternity.  These  plays,  like  unsigned  Grecian 
statues,  stand  by  their  own  majesty  and  need  no  petty 
personalities  as  their  credentials.  To  add  one  more 
example,  Whately,  I  believe,  proved  once  that  Napoleon 
never  Hved;  yet  who  doubts  the  effect  of  the  Napoleonic 
tradition? 

No,  if  the  New  Testament  be  nothing  but  a  tissue  of 
fairy  tales  and  Jesus  but  a  fairy  prince,  the  story  is  not 
a  whit  less  instructive  to  the  scientist.  The  pity  of  it  all 
is  that  a  Christendom  pretending  to  believe  the  story 
has  carefully  selected  out  the  least  credible  or  important 
parts  of  it  and  has  made  them  the  corner  stones  of  faith 
while  rejecting  the  really  scientific  elements  which  were 
its  core. 

Finally,  there  are  certain  aspects  of  Jesus'  teaching 
which  are  basic  to  a  wholesome  concept  of  social  work, 
and  which  may  be  called  scientific  without  abusing  the 
term.  His  concept  of  God  as  love  and  of  all  worship  or 
service  as  love  is  the  key  to  any  sound  process  of  social 
amehoration.  His  vision  of  social  justice  as  laid  down  in 
the  Golden  Rule  and  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  is  the 
greatest  Magna  Charta  of  human  rights  and  liberties 
ever  formulated.  In  his  doctrine  of  the  vine  and  its 
branches  he  lays  down  not  only  a  plan  for  church  organi- 
zation— the  church  universal,  the  communion  of  the 
saints,  the  City  of  God,  the  Mystic  Body — but  he  fore- 
casts a  leading  concept  of  modern  sociological  theory; 


8o  THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL   WORK 

namely,  that  human  society  is  an  organic  unity,  if  not 
of  the  biological,  then  of  the  psychological  order.  And, 
mark  this,  that  organic  unity  as  Jesus  saw  it  seems  to 
overleap  every  barrier  of  geography  or  race  and  to  antic- 
ipate what  we  begin  to  call  the  international  mind. 

If,  as  I  believe  is  the  case,  rehgion  and  science  are  not 
absolute  opposites  but  are  complementary,  mutual  cor- 
rectives, then  Jesus  rendered  science  and  social  work  a 
magnificent  service  by  two  contributions.  First,  his  con- 
sistency, living  and  demonstrating  the  theory  of  God  as 
ever-present  and  all  powerful.  Second,  his  idealism: 
an  absolute  idealism  which  conceived  God  as  all  in  all, 
a  power  that  makes  not  only  for  righteousness  but  also 
for  health,  peace,  and  the  hfe  more  abundant.  It  was 
this  indomitable  optimism  which  sustained  him  and  which 
preserves  and  energizes  the  modern  social  worker  whether 
he  be  churched  or  unchurched.  Christian  or  non-Chris- 
tian, or  name  any  name  prescribed  in  the  codes  whereby 
man  must  be  saved. 

IV 

Now  turning  back  into  the  main  highway  of  our  argu- 
ment, if  you  demand  a  concrete  and  explicit  answer  to 
the  question.  Why  should  social  work  be  done  in  the 
scientific  spirit?  I  should  say,  for  two  reasons.  It  is  a 
dangerous,  if  not  to  say  extra-hazardous,  trade,  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  worker  himself;  and  it  is  a  delicate  and 
even  perilous  adventure  from  the  standpoint  of  those 
whom  social  workers  would  serve. 

Anybody  who  has  ever  tried  to  befriend  the  poor,  the 
sick,  the  broken  in  spirit,  the  down-and  out,  knows  the 
tremendous  strain  on  body  and  nerves.  The  constant 
tugging  at  one's  sympathies,  the  recoil  of  disgust  at  the 
sight  of  filth,  disease,  and  broken  character,  the  lurking 
possibihty  of  contagion,  the  discouragement  over  failure 
after  faithful  ministration — all  these  wear  down  the  fine 
edge  of  one's  good  will.     It  is  easy  to  get  the  scolding 


THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL   WORK  8 1 

habit,  to  develop  a  spirit  of  moral  peevishness,  to  assume 
the  role  of  apostle,  to  exaggerate  one's  own  sense  of 
amiable  virtues  by  constant  contrast  with  the  lives  of 
those  whom  we  may  suppose  to  have  wasted  income  and 
opportunity.  The  persistent  giving  of  good  advice  is 
subtly  degenerative  to  one 's  moral  nature.  Good  people 
must  beware  of  misinterpreting  the  maxim  about  man's 
extremity  being  God's  opportunity.  Man's  extremity 
never  means  the  doctor's  or  the  preacher's  or  the  social 
worker's  opportunity  for  bossing  and  humiliating.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  one  escapes  the  Scylla  of  nagging,  it 
is  easy  to  fall  into  the  Charybdis  of  complacency;  then 
you  have  a  sentimental  Good  Fellow,  masculine  gender; 
Lady  Bountiful,  feminine  gender.  If  I  were  a  "case" 
being  "friendly  \'isited"  I  should  prefer  the  scold.  And 
the  danger  to  sound  social  policy  is  greater  from  the 
Good  Fellow,  for  he  means,  enter  the  patron,  exit  the 
real  neighbor  and  good  citizen. 

The  scientific  spirit  does  away  mth  obtrusive  personal- 
ity; it  pours  a  healthy  astringent  upon  one's  ego.  It 
broadens  our  sense  of  personality  until  we  get  the  idea 
firmly  fixed  that  we  are  merely  representing  the  best 
thought  of  the  community  and  are  not  exploiting  our  own 
vanity  upon  the  poor  and  needy.  This  is  a  very  subtle 
temptation  and  can  only  be  met  by  rigorous  scientific 
self-immolation.  Another  hazard  grows  out  of  nervous 
strain  and  the  air  of  patronage:  this  is  the  tendency  to 
measure  one's  courtesy  and  good  manners  by  social 
ranks.  Discourtesy  is  no  longer  a  good  business  asset. 
Even  railroad  ticket  agents  before  the  war  were  being 
trained  to  say,Thank  you.  But  in  the  older  relief  type  of 
charity  a  certain  kind  of  waspishness  and  thinly  veiled 
contempt  still  survives  in  places.  I  have  never  forgiven  a 
prominent  Boston  charity  worker  for  snapping  her  fingers 
in  the  face  of  an  applicant  for  aid  in  San  Francisco  during 
those  strenuous  rehabilitation  days  after  the  disaster  of 
1906.    I  do  not  know  whether  the  man's  case  was  worthy 


82  THE    SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT   AND   SOCIAL   WORK 

or  not;  but  I  do  know  that  no  real  scientist  would  so  forget 
the  common  decencies.  I  have  before  me  a  post  card 
written  to  a  poor  woman  by  the  milk  and  ice  association 
of  an  Eastern  city.  It  disdains  all  friendly  salutation 
and  reads  simply:  ''If  you  do  not  report  at  regular 
Mothers  Meeting  Friday  or  Saturday,  July  23,  or  24, 
at  10  a.  m.  at  Blank  Building  your  milk  will  be  stopped." 
It  ends  likewise  abruptly  without  even  the  dry  courtesies 
of  a  business  letter.  Does  social  service  mean  such  for- 
getting of  ordinary  manners?  St.  Francis  of  Assisi, 
patron  of  relief  workers,  saw  the  value  of  courtesy. 
"Know,  beloved  Brother,"  he  once  said,  "that  courtesy 
is  one  of  the  essential  qualities  of  God,  Who  maketh  His 
sun  to  shine  and  His  rain  to  fall  upon  the  just  and  upon 
the  unjust,  through  Courtesy;  and  Courtesy,  is  also  the 
sister  of  Charity,  which  puts  out  Hatred  and  preserves 
Love  alive." 

As  an  antidote  to  the  personal  dangers  of  social  work, 
and  as  a  rough  statement  of  the  scientific  attitude,  I 
might  add  a  sentence  from  the  veteran  head  of  the  New 
York  School  of  Philanthropy:  "What  charitable  visi- 
tors need  more  than  money  in  their  purse  is  faith  in  their 
poor,  humility  of  spirit,  jolly  comradeship,  sheer  psychic 
power  to  carry  conviction  for  the  right  and  sensible 
action  against  every  argument  springing  from  discour- 
agement or  bitterness  or  suspicion;  from  ignorance  or 
stubborness  or  weakness;  even  against  such  plausible 
arguments  as  arise  from  the  very  virtues  and  sound 
instincts  of  the  poor." 

Charitable  reUef  of  all  sorts  is  a  difficult  and  delicate 
job  whether  you  consider  the  recipient  or  the  community 
at  large.  Mediaeval  charity  often  bred  beggars.  Cash 
donations  from  either  private  or  public  funds  may  induce 
chronic  pauperism.  Personal  service  may  easily  cause 
a  poor  family  to  lose  its  self-respect  and  to  "get  Hmber." 
Private  charities  have  been  known  to  compete  for  the 
care  of  families,  not  for  the  sake  of  the  families,  but  to 


THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK  83 

enhance  their  own  prestige.  Private  charity  sometimes 
pulls  against  public  agencies,  and  vice  versa.  During 
the  winter  of  19 14  certain  families  in  Pittsburgh  were 
aided  by  several  settlements,  benevolent  individuals,  and 
private  charity  societies;  none  of  these  agencies  knew 
that  others  were  interested;  each  thought  it  was  in  con- 
trol. Finally,  to  complete  the  mess,  the  policeman  of  the 
district  went  about  from  house  to  house  "to  ascertain 
the  needs"  preparatory  to  a  raid  on  the  city  treasury. 
To  make  confusion  worse  confounded,  the  city  was 
suddenly  caught  in  the  throes  of  a  "bundle  day."  One 
poor  woman  left  a  job  bringing  her  in  two  dollars  a  day 
and  stood  for  three  bitterly  cold  days  in  a  line  at  the 
bundle  warehouse.  When  she  finally  got  inside,  all  she 
could  find  was  a  bundle  of  old  clothes  worth  at  most 
fifty  cents.  Such  charity  is  not  only  unscientific,  it  is 
criminal.  So  is  the  charity  that  makes  each  family  or 
case  the  vested  interest  of  a  benevolent  individual  or 
society.  So  is  the  system  of  township  relief  as  it  used  to 
be  administered  in  New  England,  where  whole  towns  were 
pauperized  and  corrupted.  Illustrations  might  be  mul- 
tipHed  ad  nauseam. 

But  how  can  the  scientific  spirit  in  charity  lessen  its 
hazards?  Chiefly  by  developing  the  rigorous  determina- 
tion to  see  clearly.  That  means  thinking  through  each 
problem.  The  first  distinctive  test  of  a  scientific  worker 
is  his  ability  to  see  and  formulate  a  problem  clearly. 
This  is  diagnosis  equally  in  medicine,  in  law,  in  educa- 
tion, and  in  social  work.  It  is  hunting  out  cause  and 
effect  in  all  their  ramifications,  whether  the  problem  be 
restoring  a  family  to  economic  independence  or  writing 
social  insurance  laws  on  the  statute  books.  It  is  refusing 
to  be  bluffed  by  what  "everybody  believes."  Remember 
that  "everybody"  used  to  believe  in  witches,  in  posses- 
sion by  devils  as  the  cause  of  insanity  and  epilepsy;  "the 
best  people"  until  recently  believed  that  drink  caused 
ninety  per  cent  of  all  poverty  and  crime,  and  that  un- 


84  THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

employment  was  a  matter  of  downright  personal  laziness. 
Many  people  still  believe  that  eighteenth-century  English 
workpeople  were  debased  wholly  by  the  English  system 
of  public  relief;  they  forget  all  the  other  forces  contribut- 
ing to  that  degeneration.  Many  good  charity  workers 
also  still  profess  to  beheve,  because  Mayor  Seth  Low  and 
his  associates  abolished  public  outdoor  relief  in  Brooklyn 
in  1888,  that  public  relief  is  necessarily  corrupting.  The 
average  person  still  beHeves  that  because  United  States 
military  pensions  have  been  grotesquely  extravagant,  all 
other  forms  of  public  insurance  or  pensions  are  necessa- 
rily vicious.  For  the  most  part  these  opinions  are  simply 
swallowed.  But  no  real  scientist  swallows  without 
examination;  he  maintains  the  critical  judgment  and  the 
open  mind. 

To  see  a  social  problem  clearly  means  also  to  get  away 
from  mere  impressions.  It  is  astonishing  how  many  of 
our  decisions  are  made  upon  mere  chance  impressions. 
Love  at  first  sight  is  matched  by  condemning  a  criminal 
because  of  the  "look  out  of  his  eyes."  The  man  in  the 
street  gives  a  quarter  to  a  beggar  if  he  "likes  his  looks." 
The  family  that  can  assume  an  air  of  broken  gentility 
scores  high  in  favor  at  the  charity  ofi&ce.  The  crook  that 
looks  Uke  a  gentleman  may  get  off  on  probation.  The  de- 
vout and  compliant  convict  used  to  hookwink  pardon  and 
parole  boards.  There  is  in  all  this  an  element  of  bene- 
ficent charlatanry,  charitable  palmistry,  or  phrenology. 
It  is  utterly  unscientific,  just  as  unscientific  as  the  reason 
an  Industrial  Worker  of  the  World  gave  me  recently  for 
his  belief  that  unemployment  is  increasing.  He  insisted 
that  he  knew  it  by  personal  experience  and  by  the  length- 
ened bread  lines  in  an  Eastern  city.  It  is  the  same  spirit 
that  makes  the  optimistic  poet  sing  of  God  in  his  heaven 
and  well-being  on  earth  when  he  feels  well,  or  that  drives 
the  pessimist  with  bad  digestion  to  call  this  the  rottenest 
of  all  rotten  worlds.  The  "general  feel  of  things  "  is  not  a 
sound  guide  to  either  social  theory  or  practice.    I  grant 


THE   SCrENTEFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK  85 

that  it  is  difficult  to  get  beneath  mere  impressions;  it 
takes  time  and  persistence.  We  did  not  need  Goethe  to 
tell  us  that  doing  is  easy  but  thinking  hard—  that  is,  real 
thinking,  thinking  through  a  problem  to  some  sound  con- 
clusion and  not  mere  daydreaming.  But  such  thinking 
is  the  price  of  scientific  work  which  will  do  more  good 
than  harm. 

The  final  question  is  how  and  where  to  get  this  scien- 
tific training.  Science  is  both  an  attitude  and  a  tech- 
nique. The  attitude,  which  I  analyzed  earlier,  can  be 
cultivated  without  teachers,  books,  or  colleges.  The 
technique,  particularly  social  technique,  may  be  had  from 
the  Hterature  of  economics,  political  science  and  soci- 
ology in  their  applied  aspects.  You  may  go  to  college  or 
to  a  school  of  philanthropy;  you  may  imbibe  methods 
from  a  trained  social  worker  in  your  community.  But 
remember  that  the  technique  of  science  is  never  fixed. 
Science  always  moves  on.  The  charitable  methods  of 
twenty  years  ago  may  be  utterly  obsolete  now.  Our 
methods,  even  the  most  scientific,  may  be  the  laugh- 
ingstock of  our  descendants  in  the  twenty-first  century. 
Social  work  may  become  a  profession,  if  by  that  we  mean 
that  in  addition  to  having  an  ideal  of  promoting  social 
welfare,  social  workers  become  really  qualified  to  do  their 
work  as  no  other  profession  can.  It  will  become  truly 
scientific  only  when  every  social  worker  sets  as  his  ideal 
not  drawing  his  meed  of  praise  or  money  for  turning 
off  the  day's  work  with  as  little  friction  as  possible,  but 
knowing  the  truth  as  it  is  and  adding  to  the  sum  of  truth 
for  the  creation  of  a  world  more  worth  living  in  and  work- 
ing for.  To  work  for  the  truth  that  shall  make  you  free — ■ 
that  is  the  scientific  spirit. 


CHAPTER  V 

SENTIMENTALITY  AND   SOCIAL  REFORM 

Up  to  this  point  I  hope  it  is  perfectly  clear  that  social 
work  to  be  scientific  must  express  organized  intelligence 
and  good  will  to  men.  But  in  arguing  thus  for  illumi- 
nated sympathy  as  an  indispensable  mark  of  the  genuine 
scientific  spirit  one  must  not  be  misunderstood  as  capit- 
ulating to  the  apostles  of  "softness."  The  sword  of  the 
scientific  spirit  is  good  steel,  forged  in  the  warmth  of  hu- 
man emotions  but  tempered  in  the  cooling  waters  of  hard 
thinking.  We  must  now  get  hold  of  some  of  the  element- 
ary rules  of  that  tempering  process. 

The  tragedies  of  leadership  in  social  reform  and  social 
work  result  in  the  main  from  failure  to  work  out  a  prac- 
ticable basis  of  partnership  between  ideas  and  sentiments. 
Men  recognize  theoretically  that  ideas  always  appear 
swaddled  in  feelings.  But  many  of  us  go  about  the  day's 
business  apparently  on  the  assumption  that  ideas  are  as 
clear  cut  and  unemotional  as  hammers  or  rifles.  Hence 
our  projects  fail  to  capture  men's  hearts  and  imagina- 
tions. We  have  to  recognize  that,  after  all,  reason  in  men 
is  only  the  very  tip  of  their  iceberg  of  mental  life.  We 
live  by  our  sentiments,  even  by  our  illusions.  They  fur- 
nish the  real  motive  power  which  makes  things  go.  They 
are  at  the  bottom  of  our  choices.  And  while  educated 
choices  are  the  prerequisite  to  any  sort  of  social  change 
worthy  the  name  of  progress,  the  process  of  education 
must  include  some  canalizing  of  the  sentiments.  The  re- 
former who  does  not  include  this  in  his  program  of  good 
works  is  foredoomed  to  failure. 

But  it  is  notorious  that  in  many  of  our  fellow  citizens 

86 


SENTIMENTALITY  AND   SOCIAL  REFORM  87 

both  sentiment  and  reason  have  been  short-circuited  into 
bathos  and  sentimentality.  And  the  words  "social  re- 
former" have  become  almost  an  epithet  of  derision,  be- 
cause some  would-be  leaders  with  insufficient  sand  and 
iron  in  their  systems  have  capitalized  this  tendency  to- 
ward sickly  softness,  and,  as  a  result,  have  scored  per- 
sonal successes  with  indecent  haste,  have  scratched  paths 
which  could  not  be  followed,  and  which  must  be  resur- 
veyed  and  laid  out  at  great  cost  and  inconvenience.  I 
asked  a  friend  recently  about  the  speech  of  a  housing  re- 
former she  had  been  urged  to  hear.  "It  was  too  sticky- 
mouthed,"  was  the  curt  comment.  But  it  is  that  very 
stickiness  and  sweety- sweetness,  or  the  "tear  in  the. 
voice,"  that  scoops  in  votes  and  money  from  certain  sec- 
tions of  the  population.  Some  people  are  organically 
drunk,  or  so  nearly  so,  that  the  slightest  whiff  of  senti- 
mentality starts  them  reeling;  and  a  big  dose  may  in- 
duce delirium. 

Since  social  reform  and  social  work  must  steer  between 
the  two  dangers  of  cold,  sterilized,  depersonalized  ideas 
and  warm,  saccharine,  oily,  oozy,  intoxicating,  overper- 
sonalized  sentimentalism,  we  must  be  sure  that  we  recog- 
nize sentimentaHsm  when  we  see  it,  and  do  not  hit  the 
wrong  heads  in  the  name  of  reason  and  clear  thinking. 

In  the  first  place,  enthusiasm  is  not  sentimentality. 
George  Meredith,  the  savage  baiter  of  sentimentalists, 
remarked  that  "Nonsense  of  enthusiasts  is  very  diffierent 
from  nonsense  of  ninnies."  I  doubt  if  any  American 
would  consider  ex-President  Taf t  as  either  soft-minded  or 
tender  toward  the  "sob  squad."  But  he  said  recently,  in 
a  notable  address, "  Give  me  misdirected  fervor,  wild  tbeo- 
ries,  if  only  the  sincere  spirit  of  service  is  alive,  because 
the  hard  experience  of  practical  results  will  temper  this 
into  useful  activity  later."  That  is,  the  enthusiast  is  hon- 
est, but  the  sentimentalist  will  fudge  the  truth  and  stage 
a  lie  if  it  will  snare  the  silly  fowl  he  is  after.  Here  we 
must  beware  of  confusing  the  issue  by  accepting  the  dis- 


88  THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

tinction  sometimes  made^  between  social  reform  as  "pas- 
sionate" and  economic  theory  as  "intellectual."  Such 
reformers  as  Plato,  More,  or  Comte  were  not  passionate. 
The  real  distinction,  if  there  be  one,  should  be  made  be- 
tween theories  of  social  reform  and  economic  theory;  or 
between  social  reformers  and  economic  reformers.  To 
illustrate:  protectionists,  bimetallists,  ship  subsidists,  and 
laissez  fairehts  have  been  just  as  passionate  in  their  way 
as  are  the  most  eloquent  pleaders  for  "social  justice"  or 
eugenics,  or  single  tax,  or  widows'  pensions,  or  minimum- 
wage  legislation.  Professors  of  Greek  defending  some 
theory  of  interpretation  have  been  known  to  fan  up  a 
pillar  of  fire  equal  to  the  most  ardent  enthusiasm  of  the 
most  passionate  social  reformer.  Human  life  is  dynamic, 
and  its  calorie  value  may  be  expressed  equally  in  the  field 
of  theory  or  practice.  If  acrimony  be  counted  a  species  of 
passionate  negative  enthusiasm,  I  challenge  any  fair- 
minded  person  to  produce  from  the  field  of  social  reform 
any  person  or  project  betraying  more  ardor  of  passion  or 
prejudice  than  is  displayed  by  the  critics  or  opponents  of 
reform.  Enthusiasm  for  social  reform  is  no  more  repre- 
hensible than  enthusiasm  over  breeding  a  new  strain  of 
cattle  or  formulating  a  new  theory  of  value.  Construct- 
ive social  reform  ought  to  look  upon  itself  and  be  looked 
upon  merely  as  the  administrative  aspect  of  a  develop- 
ing body  of  economic  and  political  laws.  It  must  recog- 
nize the  Hmitations  imposed  by  those  laws,  and  without 
hysteria.  But  at  the  same  time  it  is  quite  appropriate 
for  the  reformer  to  see  in  these  "laws"  only  relative  fijf- 
ity,  and  to  accept  them  only  as  working  conventions,  as 
shore  marks  of  levels  in  the  scientific  and  practical  ex- 
periences of  the  past.  This  attitude  of  mind  may  be  ir- 
reverent or  heretical  or  contemptuous,  with  or  without 
heat;  but  it  is  hardly  to  be  called  sentimental. 

1  See,  e.  g.,  W.  H.  Hamilton,  "  Economic  Theory  and  Social 
Reform,"  Jour.  Pol.  Econ.,  June,  1915. 


SENTIMENTALITY  AND   SOCIAL  REFORM  89 

Neither  will  clear  thinking  confuse  sentimentalism  with 
ideals,  dreams,  or  Utopias.  No  thoroughgoing  Utopist 
was  ever  sentimental;  the  more  radical  and  complete  his 
Utopia  the  less  he  is  open  to  the  charge.  To  take  only 
one  test,  no  sentimentalist  would  for  a  second  think  of 
breaking  up  the  family;  on  the  contrary,  he  weeps  at  the 
idea  of  a  hard  hearted  juvenile  court  judge  separating  a 
child  from  its  drunken  and  wastrel  parents.  But  every 
Utopist,  from  Plato  and  Campanella  and  More  down  to 
Sir  Francis  Galton  and  the  eugenists,  has  advocated  some 
more  stringent  form  of  social  control  over  the  family. 
The  "practical  man"  frequently  makes  the  mistake  of 
classing  the  "dreamer"  with  the  softhearts.  But  while 
dreams  may  be  wrapped  in  emotion  they  are  often  as  de- 
void of  sentiment  as  a  formal  syllogism.  Sentimentality 
never  leaves  a  solid  precipitate;  but  remember  once  more 
that  ever}'  institution,  every  invention,  ever>'  sober  gray 
law  was  once  a  dream  in  the  heart  of  some  human  being. 
The  social  reformer  must  dream  and  dream  magnifi- 
cently; the  very  poignancy  of  his  dream  stings  him  into 
the  attempt  to  cast  it  into  the  mold  of  realized  fact.  Be- 
cause he  dreams  while  other  men  merely  slop  about  in 
feeling  or  stumble  into  hasty  action,  he  may  come  nearer 
scoring  a  bull's-eye  on  the  target  of  truth.  That  is  why 
Aristotle  seems  to  have  counted  the  poet  more  reliable 
than  the  historian  as  interpreter  of  serried  facts.  The 
idealist,  too,  belongs  rather  with  the  dreamer  and  Uto- 
pist than  with  the  sentimentalists.  It  is  a  matter  of  sur- 
prise and  regret  that  such  a  really  great  social  scientist 
as  Professor  W.  G.  Sumner  should  have  heaped  contempt 
upon  ideals  as  a  motive  factor  in  social  development; 
for  ideals  are  really  the  finished  sketches  by  which  social 
reconstruction  is  to  be  guided.  Ideals,  Sumner  says,  are 
illusions.  But  so  is  a  tool,  so  is  a  house,  so  is  science,  so  is 
history,  if  you  take  the  trouble  to  analyze  them  far 
enough.  Every  man  who  counts  for  anything  in  the 
world  is  an  idealist.    He  is  a  sentimentalist  only  if  he  fails 


90  THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

to  take  his  ideals  seriously  and  uses  the  slapstick  or  ex- 
poses his  beating  heart  in  order  to  wring  a  spasm  of  fac- 
titious feeling  from  his  audience.  The  genuine  social 
reformer  demands  social  reconstruction,  not  because  ex- 
isting arrangements  are  out  of  joint  with  his  particular 
ideal  scheme,  but  because  he  believes  he  can  show  that  it 
is  possible  to  replace  them  by  others  more  in  harmony 
with  existing  human  character  and  human  resources. 
Indeed,  it  takes  a  sturdy  heart  to  be  a  real  idealist.  It 
was  no  mean-spirited  or  defeated  man  who  could  write 
credo  quia  absurdum  as  the  key  to  the  program  of  revo- 
lutionary ideahsm  laid  down  by  the  pioneers  of  the  Chris- 
tian church:  Tertullian  was  no  tender-minded  "soft  peda- 
gogist." 

Moreover,  imagination  is  not  sentimentalism.  Senti- 
mentality never  raised  a  single  human  being  one  inch 
above  his  old  level.  But,  we  are  told,  "moral  evolution 
has  consisted  almost  wholly  in  the  increasing  liberation 
of  the  imagination."  The  social  reformer  must  not  hesi- 
tate to  use  his  imagination.  Indeed,  if  he  is  to  succeed  at 
all,  it  must  be  in  large  part  because  he  can  slip  into  the 
skins  of  his  fellows  and  put  himself  in  their  places.  He 
must  master  the  new  "psychology  of  attitudes,"  which 
in  plain  English  means  the  ability  to  use  the  imagination 
as  a  guide  in  interpreting  prejudices  and  preconceptions. 
As  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  points  out,  if  we  are  going  to  arrest 
our  present  pretty  clear  drift  toward  revolution  or 
revolutionary  disorder,  it  must  not  be  through  train- 
ing a  governing  class  to  get  the  better  of  an  argu- 
ment or  the  best  of  a  bargain;  it  must  be  through  laying 
hold  of  the  imaginations  of  "  this  drifting,  sullen,  and  sus- 
picious multitude,  which  is  the  working  body  of  the  coun- 
try." It  takes  imagination  to  lay  hold  of  imagination. 
Sentimentality  will  not  do  it. 

We  may  pass  by  with  only  incidental  reference  the 
obvious  fact  that  much  of  conservatism  is  merely  senti- 
mental attachment  to  what  is  old  and  familiar:  the  do- 


SENTIMENTALITY  AND   SOCIAL  REFORM  91 

tard  is  always  sentimental.  The  young  radical  may  be 
wrong-headed  and  self -centered,  but  he  is  less  likely,  by 
contrast,  to  be  soft.  He  may  be  dogmatic,  uncomprom- 
ising; he  may  fit  exactly  Peacock's  satire  and  say  to  him- 
self, 

After  careful  meditation 

And  pronounced  deliberation 

On  the  various  petty  projects  that  have  been  shown, 

Not  a  scheme  in  agitation 

For  the  world 's  amelioration 

Has  a  grain  of  common  sense  in  it,  except  my  own. 

But  the  more  dogmatic,  the  harder  he  is.  Radicalism 
and  heresy  run  the  risk  of  degenerating  into  sentimen- 
talism  only  when  they,  too,  have  been  passed  in  the  race 
and  are  about  to  be  relegated  to  the  shelves  of  conserva- 
tive and  accepted  truth. 

The  "practical  man,"  whether  he  be  a  social  reformer 
or  whether  he  decry  meddling  with  the  social  order,  is 
frequently  if  not  always  a  bit  of  a  sentimentalist,  just  as 
the  dotard  conservative  and  the  self-made  man  and  the 
amiable,  easy-going  parent  are  sentimentalists;  and  for 
much  the  same  reason.  They  all  are  inclined  to  drivel 
over  their  own  pet  virtues,  to  fondle  them,  to  make  them 
the  ready  excuse  for  certain  ineptitudes  in  thinking  or  cer- 
tain gross  breaches  of  good  taste. 

It  is  precisely  these  practical  conservative  men  and 
women  who  are  so  suspicious  of  preventive  measures  in 
the  field  of  charitable  relief.  They  sentimentalize  over 
the  maintenance  of  existing  class  lines  and  fear  any  move 
to  eliminate  the  patron  or  to  promote  real  independence 
and  self-help.  A  sweet,  pretty,  friendly  visitor,  of  the 
type  that  goes  calling  on  the  poor  in  a  limousine,  was 
discussing  socialism  recently  with  a  student.  "Good 
heavens!"  she  cried,  "I  don't  want  any  of  this  horrible 
socialism.  If  we  get  socialism  I  won't  have  any  poor  to 
visit."    Nero  is  still  in  our  midst,  stimulating  his  di- 


92  THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

gestion  by  parading  the  poor  before  him.  I  hoped,  evi- 
dently in  vain,  that  we  had  buried  the  attempt  to  store 
up  merit  by  practicing  on  the  poor.  It  is  just  these  para- 
sites who  have  brought  discredit  upon  the  phrase  "so- 
cial service."  I  confess  a  growing  tendency  in  myseK  to 
delete  it  from  my  vocabulary,  simply  because  it  is  so  of- 
ten a  mixture  of  pious  cant,  meanness,  cloudy  vision,  and 
sentimentalism. 

So  far  our  analysis  seems  clear  enough.  But  now  comes 
a  troop  of  questions  not  so  easily  answered.  Is  it  senti- 
mental to  be  interested  in  one's  fellow  men?  Is  it  possi- 
ble really  to  love  them,  or  at  least  to  have  some  social  re- 
gard for  them,  their  rights,  their  interests?  Or  have  all 
the  lovers  of  mankind  been  merely  soft  pretenders?  Is 
''enlightened  self-interest"  the  only  safe  guide  out  of  the 
sloughs  of  sentimentalism?  A  recent  lecture  by  a  prom- 
inent business  man  closed  with  this  stirring  appeal  and 
Godspeed  to  his  student  hearers:  "I  hope  you  all  make  a 
barrel  of  money!"  Shall  we  lie  tamely  down,  accept  the 
tip,  and  pass  it  along  to  ardent  youth  that  the  only  things 
worthy  the  interest  of  sane,  healthy,  virile,  scientific, 
sensible  men  are  stocks  and  bonds,  laws  of  exchange,  prin- 
ciples of  finance,  and  the  whole  round  of  mere  money 
grubbing?  Or  permit  to  go  unchallenged  that  time-hon- 
ored fallacy,  the  economic  man?  Shall  we  brand  as  silly 
and  sentimental  the  principle  that  we  are  all  part  and  par- 
cel of  each  other,  a  principle  as  sound  in  sociology  as  it  is 
in  ethics?  Or  shall  we  lay  as  the  basis  for  all  social  polity, 
all  social  legislation,  all  social  reform,  the  absolute  rock 
of  fact,  namely,  that  we  are  each  and  all  of  us 
social  to  the  very  core,  and  that  we  are  only  real 
men  and  women  as  we  are  vitally  interested  in  others 
and  disposed  to  cooperate  with,  as  well  as  exploit, 
them?  Sociology  is  not  sentimentality.  It  is  not  merely 
the  science  of  making  poor  folks  richer  and  happier  at 
other  people's  expense.  It  is  a  science  in  the  making 
which  is  attempting  to  tell  us  that  we  are  hopelessly 


SENTIMENTALITY  AND   SOCIAL  REFORM  93 

bound  up  one  with  the  other,  and  that  none  of  us  are  safe 
or  sane  so  long  as  any  stupid,  wretched,  ignorant,  or  pro- 
foundly miserable  folks  are  tolerated  in  our  midst.  In- 
terest in  fellow  men  turns  out  to  be  science,  not  senti- 
mentality. 

Here  we  might  stop  and  summarize.  Sentimentalists, 
it  appears,  are  essentially  parasites,  spiritual  Malaprops. 
They  are  cheats,  who  try  to  get  something  for  nothing. 
They  are,  as  George  Meredith  declared,  "they  who  seek 
to  enjoy  without  incurring  the  Immense  Debtorship  for 
a  thing  done";  and  their  practices  "a  happy  pastime  and 
an  important  science  to  the  timid,  the  idle,  and  the  heart- 
less; but  a  danming  one  to  them  who  have  anything  to 
forfeit."  They  are  the  folks  who  decry  organized  effort 
to  prevent  poverty  and  try  to  obtain  a  bargain-counter 
dose  of  warmth  and  coziness  from  a  nickel  sUpped  to  a 
street  beggar  or  from  a  bunch  of  dirty  cast-off  clothes 
conferred  upon  the  worthy  poor  on  bundle  day.  ^  They 
are  the  people  who  drive  us  to  madness  by  their  "im- 
paired waterworks."  I  am  reminded  of  the  matinee  idol 
who,  exasperated  to  the  quick  by  ill-timed  tears,  blurted 
over  the  footlights,  "Now,  ladies,  please:  I  want  you  to 
cry,  I'm  paid  to  make  you  cry,  but  for  God's  sake  cry  in 
the  right  place!"  "To  every thmg  there  is  a  season," 
said  the  Preacher;  "a  time  to  weep  and  a  time  to  laugh." 
But  he  assigns  no  place  to  sentimental  insipidity,  for  every 
sane  man  knows  that  sympathy  must  always  walk  with 
science.  It  must  never  get  away  from  understanding  and 
must  always  be  sure  that  it  is  playing  in  time  and  tune. 
That  is  why  we  give  short  shrift  to  both  the  person  who 
is  always  "  feelmg  his  feelings, "  and  to  the  "  Gawdsaker." 
The  "Godsaker,"  according  to  Wells,  is  the  curse  of  all 
progress,  the  hectic  consumption  that  kills  a  thousand 
good  beginnings  and  promising  experiments  in  social  wel- 
fare. He  is  "the  person  who  gets  excited  by  any  delib- 
erate discussion  and  gets  up  wringing  his  hands  and 
screaming,  '  For  Gawd's  sake,  let's  do  something  now!''^ 


94  THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

There  is  no  lack  of  concrete  social  problems  confront- 
ing the  reformer  by  which  to  test  our  analysis  of  senti- 
mentality. In  some  quarters  it  is  still  considered  senti- 
mental or  worse  to  speak  of  the  abolition  of  poverty.  But 
Professor  Hollander  and  other  economists  are  proving 
statistically  that  the  modern  civilized  world  is  producing 
or  could  produce  enough  and  more  than  enough  of  food, 
clothing,  and  shelter  to  provide  decently  for  every  human 
being;  hence  that  poverty,  as  we  are  familar  with  it,  is  un- 
necessary. Poets  like  Heine,  anarchists  like  Kropotkin, 
and  sociaUsts  like  Hertzka  told  us  this  long  ago,  but  we 
smiled  indulgently  and  called  them  dreamers  drunk  with 
feeling.  But  now  that  the  problem  can  be  put  to  us  in 
mathematical  form  and  pictured  in  statistical  graphs  we 
begin  to  foresee  the  solution  of  poverty  as  not  only  prac- 
ticable but  as  good  form. 

The  same  holds  true  of  the  problem  of  unemployment. 
Men  were  called  sentimental  who  declared  that  a  reserve 
pool  of  underpaid  and  irregularly  employed  laborers  is 
not  only  bad  ethics  but  bad  business.  The  prevailing 
business  code  held,  and  it  still  holds  in  certain  financial 
circles,  that  under-employment  is  in  the  nature  of  things, 
is  one  of  the  laws  of  economics;  and  that  therefore  it  is  as 
useless  to  try  to  solve  the  problem  of  unemployment  as  to 
solve  the  problem  of  gravitation.  But  the  president  of 
the  Steel  Trust  woke  up  to  the  fact  that  perhaps  this  busi- 
ness axiom  was  wrong,  and  became  chairman  of  the  New 
York  Committee  for  the  study  of  unemployment.  Not 
long  ago  the  president  of  the  American  Blower  Company 
scattered  widely  copies  of  the  Detroit  plan  for  relieving 
and  perhaps  eliminating  unemployment.  These  men — 
and  their  number  is  increasing — are  not  sentimentalists. 
Several  years  ago  the  greatest  authority  on  unemploy- 
ment in  England  declared  that  "  practicabihty  is  never 
anything  but  a  relative  term — dependent  upon  the  ur- 
gency with  which  an  object  is  desired  and  upon  the  incon- 
veniences which  men  are  prepared  to  undergo  in  its  pur- 


SENTIMENTALITY  AND   SOCIAL  REFORM  95 

suit.  It  is  practicable  for  most  people  to  run  a  mile  to 
save  a  life.  It  is  not  practicable  for  any  one  to  run  a 
mile  unless  he  is  prepared  to  get  warm.  So  it  is  not  prac- 
ticable for  a  nation  to  get  a  mastery  of  unemployment 
without  being  prepared  to  submit  to  some  change  of 
industrial  methods  and  customs."  That  this  was  sound 
sense  and  not  sentiment  is  amply  demonstrated  by  the 
fact  that  the  social  urgency  bred  by  the  crisis  of  war  so 
re-organized  British  industry  that  unemployment  was 
less  than  at  any  other  time  in  the  last  thirty  years. 

Much  criticism  of  the  existing  industrial  order  is 
branded  by  standpatters  as  ebullition  of  parlor  socialists 
and  extravagant  youths  fed  upon  too  much  sociology. 
But  President  Taft,  in  his  message  of  February  2,  191 2, 
recommending  a  commission  on  industrial  relations,  took 
occasion  to  say:  "Numerous  special  investigations,  offi- 
cial and  unofficial,  have  revealed  conditions  in  more  than 
one  industry'  which  have  immediately  been  recognized  on 
aU  sides  as  entirely  out  of  harmony  with  accepted  Ameri- 
can standards.  It  is  probable  that  to  a  great  extent  the 
remedies  for  these  conditions,  so  far  as  the  remedies  in- 
volve legislation.  He  in  the  field  of  state  action,"  What 
clearer  sailing  orders  could  any  social  reformer  ask,  and 
who  would  charge  their  author  with  ebullition? 

The  whole  tendency  toward  state  control  over  wide 
areas  of  social  acti\dty  spells  sentimental  degeneration 
to  the  old-fashioned  laissez  faireist.  One  of  the  first  not- 
able court  pronouncements  for  state  control  occurred  in 
the  famous  case  of  Munn  v.  Illinois.  The  United  States 
Supreme  Court  held  that  "when  one  devotes  his  property 
to  a  use  in  which  the  public  has  an  interest,  he,  in  effect, 
grants  to  the  public  an  interest  in  that  use  and  must  sub- 
mit to  be  controlled  by  the  public,  for  the  common  good, 
to  the  extent  of  the  interest  he  has  created."  The  court 
later,  in  a  great  decision  compelling  railroads  to  equip 
their  cars  with  safety  devices,  rejected  the  plea  of  the 
railroads  that  the  law  would  work  hardship  upon  them. 


96  TPIE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

It  accepted  Lord  Eldon's  maxim  that  it  is  better  to 
look  hardship  in  the  face  than  to  break  down  the  rules  of 
law,  and  went  on  to  point  out  that  a  preventable  accident 
injures  somebody:  "Such  an  injury  must  be  an  irrepa- 
rable misfortune  to  some  one.  If  it  must  be  borne  entirely 
by  him  who  suffers  it,  that  is  a  hardship  to  him.  If  its 
burden  is  transferred,  so  far  as  it  is  capable  of  transfer,  to 
the  employer,  it  is  a  hardship  to  him.  It  is  quite  con- 
ceivable that  Congress,  contemplating  the  inevitable 
hardship  of  such  injuries,  and  hoping  to  diminish  the 
economic  loss  to  the  community  resulting  from  them, 
should  deem  it  wise  to  impose  their  burdens  upon  those 
who  could  measurably  control  their  causes,  instead  of 
upon  those  who  are,  in  the  main,  helpless  in  that  regard." 

The  court  may  have  reasoned  fallaciously,  but  very- 
few  critics  have  charged  it  with  erring  on  the  side  of  senti- 
mentality in  cases  involving  the  police  power  or  social  re- 
form in  general.  If  American  courts  are  sentimental  at 
all,  it  is  in  the  other  direction;  that  is,  toward  soft- 
hearted regard  for  precedent,  for  the  old,  for  the  well- 
established. 

Perhaps  in  no  other  field  of  social  reform  has  the  charge 
of  sentimentalism  been  so  persistent  as  in  attempts  to  re- 
construct our  tax  systems.  I  have  no  brief  to  file  for  any 
particular  scheme  of  financial  reform,  but  I  do  suspect 
that  the  so-called  tax  experts  are  frequently  either  dis- 
ingenuous or  sentimental  when  they  fly  at  the  head  of  a 
reform  proposal  and  brand  it  as  "the  economic  folly  of 
taxing  productive  forces  into  despondency."  I  am  in- 
clined to  feel  that  even  the  most  extravagant  and  aggres- 
sive tax  refomiers  have  a  right  to  a  serious  hearing,  partic- 
ularly after  reading  the  conclusion  of  a  recent  Massachu- 
setts tax  commission  to  the  effect  that  the  "study  of  the 
commission  revealed  that  there  was  no  science  of  taxa- 
tion save  that  of  its  evasion." 

Again,  the  demand  of  labor  and  labor's  apologists  for 
what  they  call  a  fair  share  in  the  products  of  their  toil 


SENTIMENTALITY  AND   SOCIAL  REFORM  97 

may  sometimes  exude  sentimentality.  But  what  of  the 
deliberate  attempts  to  provoke  sentimental  responses 
made  by  labor's  opponents?  What  about  the  myth  of 
"  widowsanorphans  "  ?  Or  the  drool  about  free  trade  and 
empty  dinner  pails?  On  the  first  day  of  the  great  Law- 
rence strike  the  president  of  the  American  Woolen  Com- 
pany said  in  the  course  of  a  public  statement:  "While 
manufacturers  under  normal  conditions  would  be  glad  to 
see  their  employees  earn  more  money,  the  Massachusetts 
mills  are  paying  all  that  they  can  afford  to  pay  in  the 
present  situation.  The  mills  are  still  suffering  from  a 
long  period  of  extreme  depression  due  to  the  tariff  agi- 
tation at  Washington."  Yet  we  are  assured  by  a  repu- 
table authority  that  one  of  the  very  factories  in  question 
had  paid  for  itself,  equipment  and  all,  in  the  two  years 
since  its  completion.  Is  criticism  of  such  mendacity 
sentimental?  Is  it  sentimental  to  criticise  the  Colorado 
situation?  The  report  of  the  Colorado  Bureau  of  Labor 
Statistics  for  1909-10  stated  baldly  that  the  Colorado 
Fuel  and  Iron  Company  sought  to  nullify  and  violate 
laws  calculated  to  protect  the  interest  of  the  miner  and 
used  its  "powerful  influence  to  defeat  the  enactment  of 
any  law  that  had  for  its  purpose  the  safeguarding  of  the 
lives  and  health  of  its  employees." 

We  all  recognize  that  no  Httle  perverse  sentimentalism 
has  gone  into  the  plea  for  restrictions  upon  the  labor  of 
women  and  children,  and  we  condemn  it  without  stint. 
But  what  of  the  sentimental  interest  of  employers  in 
maintaining  woman's  right  to  work  as  many  hours  as  she 
wants  to,  or  in  permitting  children  to  become  captains  of 
industry  at  any  age  they  please?  People,  strange  as  it 
may  seem,  are  still  able  to  stir  up  a  claptrap  sort  of  senti- 
mental indignation  over  the  poor  widow  whose  child  is 
prohibited  from  following  his  calling  as  newsboy  or  gum- 
seller  or  messenger  boy  on  city  streets  late  at  night.  Other 
people  are  still  gullible  enough  to  swallow  the  senti- 
mental appeal  of  the  less  ef&cient  employer  for  aid  i» 


g8  THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL   WORK 

averting  the  destruction  to  industry  and  to  nation  if  child 
labor  is  withdrawn  or  if  the  twelve-hour  shift  for  men 
and  night  work  for  women  are  prohibited.  Such  feeble 
folk  need  some  such  bracing  and  manly  tonic  as  a  nota- 
ble Connecticut  employer  gave  not  long  ago  on  the  sub- 
ject of  child  labor.  He  said,  "We  are  not  here  primarily 
to  do  business;  .  .  .  any  business  which  employs  chil- 
dren so  young  that  their  physical  and  moral  growth  is 
dwarfed  and  stunted  is,  to  the  extent  to  which  it  so  em- 
ploys them,  an  evil  in  the  community,  and  not  a  benefit." 
But  a  lot  of  patient,  hard  thinking  must  be  endured  by  a 
considerable  section  of  the  public  before  it  becomes  quite 
immune  to  such  patent  disregard  for  social  welfare  under 
the  guise  of  sincere  pleading  for  the  "worthy  poor."  Not 
all  police  or  school  authorities  are  yet  immune.  Some  are. 
I  remember  hearing  the  superintendent  of  a  California 
cannery  fly  into  a  passion  one  day  and  declare  that  he 
could  whittle  out  of  a  shingle  better  men  than  the  local 
school  board  because  they  were  so  sentimental  as  to  in- 
sist that  the  schools  should  open  on  the  day  set  by  law. 
Is  it  sentimental  to  show  up  and  to  fight  the  state  of 
business  mind  illustrated  by  the  following  editorial  in  the 
silk  manufacturers'  ofi&cial  journal? 

"An  ideal  location  would  be  one  in  which  labor  is  abundant,  in- 
telligent, skilled,  and  cheap;  where  there  were  no  labor  unions  and 
strikes;  where  the  laws  of  the  state  made  no  restrictions  as  to  the 
hours  of  work  or  age  of  workers;  where  people  were  accustomed  to 
mill  life;  and  where  there  were  no  other  textile  mills  in  the  vicinity 
to  share  in  the  labor  and  bid  up  its  price.  .  .  In  towns  where 
there  is  a  fair  population  and  no  manufacturing  industries  of  mom- 
ent a  good  supply  of  female  help  can  usually  be  had  at  low  prices; 
but  should  other  industries  come  to  the  town,  the  demand  for  help 
may  soon  exceed  the  supply  and  the  employer  find,  owing  to  the 
bidding  up  of  the  labor,  that  its  cost  is  greatly  increased,  and  its 
character  arrogant  and  independent,  and  with  no  growth  to  the 
town  equal  to  the  increasing  employment  offered,  he  finds  himself 
in  a  very  uncomfortable  position.    .  .'* 


SENTIMENTALITY  AND   SOCIAL  REFORM  99 

This  is  just  that  combination  of  shrewdness  and  driv- 
eling self-pity  that  disgusts  us  in  a  loquaciously  drunk 
man  or  woman.  A  friend  of  mine  was  once  indiscreet 
enough  to  volunteer  to  pilot  a  drunken  woman  homeward. 
The  woman  leaned  heavily  on  her,  and  they  zigzagged 
down  a  crowded  sidewalk,  to  the  incessant  refrain,  "My 
heart  is  broke.  Now  would  you  believe  it?  My  heart  is 
broke.    Now  would  you  believe  it?  " 

Only  Shakespeare  and  a  jury  of  angels  could  unscram- 
ble the  mixture  of  sentimentalism,  piety,  and  probity 
which  every  social  worker  or  reformer  sooner  or  later  en- 
counters. Perhaps  nowhere  is  he  more  likely  to  run  afoul 
of  it  than  in  the  field  of  housing  and  sanitation.  Here  is  a 
sample:  The  president  of  the  Sloss-Shefheld  Steel  and 
Iron  Company,  of  Birmingham,  Alabama,  wrote  an  indig- 
nant protest  against  the  report  of  Birmingham's  indus- 
trial conditions  published  in  the  Survey  early  in  19 12. 
"Why  [he  cried],  who  is  there  in  his  right  senses  will  deny 
that  hogs  are  the  natural  and  logical  scavengers  of  a  min- 
ing camp?  Sanitary  conditions  in  a  mining  camp! 
Pooh!  I'd  rather  have  twelve  hogs  than  fifty  men  clean- 
ing up  my  camps!" 

This  is  the  grotesque  side  of  such  drunken  slaver.  But 
sometimes  the  intoxication  is  much  more  subtle.  The 
report  of  the  New  York  Consumers'  League  for  19 10  de- 
scribed an  interview  with  a  prominent  Philadelphia  mer- 
chant at  a  settlement  house  in  which  he  was  deeply  in- 
terested. He  said:  "I  have  1,200  girls  working  for  me. 
These  girls  come  to  me  healthy,  happy,  full  of  spirit. 
They  work  a  year  and  grow  thin  and  sickly  and  then  go 
home,  and  come  back  again  after  a  while,  and  work  a  lit- 
tle longer  and  go  away  too  weak  to  work,  and  I  find  they 
have  died  of  tuberculosis.  But  nothing  can  be  done  about 
it.  It  is  the  dust  in  the  air."  "But,"  said  his  interlocu- 
tor, "surely  something  can  be  done.  You  could  remove 
the  dust  in  the  room  by  opening  the  windows."  "No  [he 
went  on],  we  cannot  open  the  windows,  because  it  creates 


lOO         THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL   WORK 

a  draft  which  moves  the  dust  from  the  machines  and  im- 
pairs the  purity  of  the  white  cloth.  It  would  bring  less  in 
the  market  and  my  stockholders  would  not  stand  for  it." 

Crocodile  tears;  disgusting  crocodile  tears. 

In  such  cases  the  real  sentimentalists  are  those  ready 
apologists  for  spiritual  wickedness  in  high  places,  those 
who  whitewash  the  business  gorilla  and  indict  his  crit- 
ics. Let  me  cite  a  flagrant  example.  In  September, 
19 II,  the  dam  owned  by  the  Bay] ess  Pulp  and  Paper 
Company  broke  and  wiped  out  the  town  of  Austin,  Penn- 
sylvania. The  engineering  journals  bitterly  condemned 
the  owners  and  constructors  of  the  dam,  and  charged 
that  the  disaster  was  without  excuse,  because  the  owners 
knew  only  too  well  that  it  was  a  flimsy  and  menacing 
structure.  But  a  neighbor  of  the  owners  said  after  the 
coroner's  inquest  over  the  seventy-six  victims:  "Through- 
out the  whole  community  these  men  stand  well.  They 
are  exceedingly  fine  characters — capable,  honorable,  and 
public-spirited.  .  .  They  are  liberal  in  their  help  to  some 
of  the  most  worthy  causes  in  the  city,  and  their  wives 
also  are  similarly  interested.  .  .  I  have  talked  with 
many  people  since  the  terrible  disaster  at  Austin,  and  I 
have  not  yet  heard  one  harsh  or  bitter  word  against 
either  of  these  men.  .  .  I  saw  them  both  for  a  few  min- 
utes on  the  day  following  the  disaster.  They  were  utterly 
prostrated.  Neither  of  them  is  physically  robust  or  rug- 
ged". .  .  (etc.,  ad  nauseam). 

This  is  simply  a  survival  of  the  ancient  cult  of  crim- 
inals; the  elder,  vigorous  superstition  has  merely  faded 
out  into  mawkish,  reverential  sentimentality.  There  is 
little  to  choose  between  the  sentimentalism  of  unbreeched 
reform  legislation  and  the  sentimental  vacuity  of  benev- 
olent feudalism. 

We  all  agree  that  many  grievous  blunders  have  been 
made  in  the  field  of  social  pathology  through  poor-law 
administration.  And  I  think  none  of  us  would  deny  that 
sentimentaUsm  has  gone  hand  in  hand  with  a  certain 


SENTIMENTALITY  AND   SOCIAL  REFORM  lOI 

hardness  and  dogmatism  in  the  interminable  debates 
over  public-poor-law  policy.  But  we  must  never  forget 
that  there  is  a  sentimentaHty  that  bewails  the  shiftless- 
ness  and  thrif  tlessness  of  the  poor  while  condoning  iden- 
tical qualities  in  the  pauperized  well-to-do.  It  is  just 
that  very  sentimentalism  which  breeds  disastrous  forms 
of  social  counter-selection  against  which  social  reformers 
train  their  guns.  Their  aim  may  be  askew:  Mr.  Carne- 
gie's scheme  for  abolishing  large  inheritances,  for  in- 
stance, may  be  a  poor  sort  of  projectile;  but  the  target 
is  plainly  visible  to  anybody  who  will  take  the  trouble 
to  look  straight. 

Sentimentality  plays  havoc  in  the  domain  of  child 
welfare.  It  has  killed  a  thousand  times  more  babies  than 
perished  in  Herod's  massacre.  Nearly  anybody  with  a 
slight  equipment  of  passing  good  looks  and  a  bit  of  nerve 
can  organize  and  foist  upon  the  soft,  credulous  public  a 
charity  for  babies  or  children.  "Save  the  kiddies"  will 
wring  tears  and  dollars  from  thousands  who  would  pass 
unheeded  a  call  to  "Prevent  infant  mortality."  Time 
was  when  any  little  company  of  good  ladies  could  open  an 
orphanage  or  home  for  foundluigs.  And  nobody  seemed 
to  think  of  connecting  sentimentality  wdth  the  tremen- 
dous death  rate  in  those  jerry-built  institutions,  or  with 
the  narrowed,  hampered,  and  broken  lives  in  store  for  the 
pitiful  survivors.  So  long  as  one  was  "doing  good,"  he 
or  she  could  not  be  held  responsible  for  such  grievous  re- 
sults. Hence  when  state  boards  of  charity  proposed  to 
visit,  inspect,  and  check  up  these  children's  charities  they 
were  charged  with  hard-heartedness  and  coldness  and 
meanness  and  lack  of  elementary  human  sympathy.  The 
same  story  might  be  told  of  the  foundation  of  "tours" 
for  the  reception  of  Ulegitimate  infants.  They  permitted 
baptism  and  the  saving  of  souls,  but  they  promoted  in- 
fant mortality,  desertion,  and  illegitimacy  in  the  name 
of  good  works. 

It  is  quite  possible  to  refuse  complete  assent  to  the 


I02  THE   SCIENTIFIC    SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

over-wrought  pleas  of  the  eugenists  and  workers  for  pre- 
vention of  feeble-mindedness,  to  recognize  the  sentimen- 
tal twang  in  much  of  the  chatter  about  race  suicide  and 
the  fittest  racial  stocks,  and  still  to  support  reform 
legislation  aimed  at  taking  out  of  their  families  those 
feeble-minded  persons  who  seem  to  menace  the  welfare  of 
a  community.  There  has  been  altogether  too  much  senti- 
mental red  fire  over  the  threatened  break-up  of  the  fam- 
ily when  a  social  worker  or  a  court  attempted  to  remove 
a  feeble-minded  household  drudge  from  lazy  or  design- 
ing parents.  And  it  is  sentimentality  of  a  peculiarly  ran- 
cid sort  that  crows  over  a  clever  job  done  when  it  has  suc- 
ceeded in  marrying  off  a  feeble-minded  village  butt.  In 
this  connection  may  I  protest  in  the  name  of  decency 
against  those  sentimental  judges  who  think  they  have 
solved  the  problem  of  happy  marriage  and  community 
peace  when  they  coerce  a  young  rake  into  marrying  an 
impressionable  girl  who  succumbs  to  his  seduction,  or 
when  they  tell  two  people  in  whom  the  light  of  love  has 
burned  out  to  "go  right  home  now  and  make  up"?  Let 
no  man  join  what  God  hath  put  asunder. 

In  housing  reform  much  sleazy  work  has  had  to  be  un- 
done and  done  over  because  people  have  felt  and  wept 
and  legislated  first,  and  investigated  afterward.  Shame 
and  disgust  over  the  presence  of  nasty  housing  conditions 
in  one's  city  only  become  efficient  shame  and  cathartic 
disgust  when  they  are  illuminated  by  the  fullest  study  in 
the  coolest  frame  of  mind  of  the  widest  possible  array  of 
facts  from  one's  own  and  from  other  cities.  The  tear  in 
the  propagandist's  voice  must  be  balanced  by  tolerance 
and  determination  to  know  the  truth  on  the  part  of  the 
constructive  reformer.  Whether  housing  laws  come  or 
not  is  a  matter  of  secondary  import.  A  tenement  law 
based  upon  tears  is  either  repealed  or  pigeonholed. 

In  this  analysis  of  sentimentalism  I  approach  with  a 
good  deal  of  trepidation  the  subject  of  mothers'  pensions. 
Without  attempting  to  pass  upon  the  merits  or  demerits 


SENTIMENTALITY  AND   SOCIAL  REFORM  103 

of  such  pension  legislation,  or  without  deciding  whether 
or  not  mothers'  pensions  are  merely  left-handed  outdoor 
relief,  it  must  be  noted  that  much  of  this  legislation  in  its 
rapid  spread  from  State  to  State  has  been  in  the  nature  of 
sentimental  infection.  In  by  no  means  every  case  have 
its  protagonists  considered  carefully  their  local  problem — 
they  have  heard  of  such  laws  in  other  States;  they  have 
''caught  the  spirit";  they  have  simply  responded  to  sug- 
gestion and  imitated,  or  seen  a  chance  to  win  popularity. 
It  is  an  example  of  mob  mind;  you  will  recall  that  mob 
mind  is  a  social  phenomenon  in  which  thought  bears  an 
inverse  ratio  to  feeling.  It  is  unnecessary  and  perhaps 
altogether  unwise  to  ask  for  the  repeal  of  any  of  these 
laws.  But  it  surely  is  the  path  of  sound  social  policy  to 
ask  that  any  further  demands  for  the  extension  of  sim- 
ilar legislation  should  be  met  with  counter-demands  to 
show  proper  grounds  of  fact  and  not  mere  vaporizings 
over  the  perhaps  mythical  virtues  of  home  life  as  it  is  not 
infrequently  practiced. 

The  sentimental  doer  of  good  plagues  the  constructive 
reformer  in  many  spots,  but  of  the  whole  devil's  brood 
of  sentimental  inventions  none  is  more  exasperating  than 
the  "Tag  Day."  In  some  American  cities  every  day 
seems  to  be  Tag  Day.  We  are  held  up  in  the  streets  to 
buy  a  miserable  little  paper  flower  for  the  orphans,  or  a 
wilted  real  flower  for  the  cripples.  And  in  Pittsburgh  a 
while  ago  women  on  the  streets  and  signs  on  the  street 
cars  bade  us  buy  a  tag  and  save  a  soul  at  the  rescue  mis- 
sion. Such  sentimentality  not  only  defrauds  legitimate 
welfare  work,  it  also  hinders  the  development  of  sound 
institutional  finance  and  recruits  the  army  of  street  beg- 
gars. 

Only  second  to  Tag  Days  in  their  potential  irritation 
to  the  healthy-minded  are  subsidies  from  the  public 
treasury  granted  by  sentimental  legislators  to  private 
charitable  enterprises  coddled  by  their  sentimental  con- 
stituents.   I  am  not  here  concerned  with  the  charge  that 


I04         THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

such  subsidies  are  a  "slush  fund"  for  financing  corrupt 
politics.  I  am  rather  tilting  at  that  attitude  of  mind 
which  the  legislator  assumes  when  he  answers  a  critic  of 
some  notoriously  inefficient  applicant  for  subsidies  with 
a  benevolent  smile  and  an  emotional  quaver:  "Ah,  but 
they're  such  nice  people;  they  mean  so  well;  they  aren't 
your  cold,  hard,  scientific  folks  who  ask  a  lot  of  questions 
and  do  nothing;  they  mean  well,  and  they  do  a  lot  of 
good.    Ain't  that  what  we're  here  for,  to  do  good?" 

The  most  dangerous  aspect  of  these  movements  for 
Tag  Days,  Bundle  Days,  Mothers'  Pensions,  and  the 
like  is  that  they  represent  "organized  emotion."  Mob 
mind  in  the  old  days  was  fairly  easy  to  control,  because 
it  could  be  localized,  shamed,  or  frightened  out  of  itself. 
A  cannon,  a  troop  of  mounted  police,  or  a  persuasive 
orator  could  disperse  it.  But  modern  means  of  commu- 
nication— newspapers,  magazines,  reports,  telephone,  tel- 
egraph— all  permit  mob  mind  to  gather  headway  almost 
imperceptibly  over  wide  areas.  Whole  cities,  states,  and 
even  the  nation  may  be  caught  in  its  swirl.  The  news- 
papers, always  on  the  alert  for  the  "human  interest" 
story,  will  exploit  anything  not  absolutely  tabooed  or 
libelous  which  will  move  to  tears.  The  cardinal  virtue 
in  newspaperdom  seems  to  be  not  exact  truth  but 
"punch";  and  punch  must  be  considered  as  the  technique 
of  obtaining  attention  under  false  pretenses,  the  "ability 
to  achieve  the  end  without  the  means";  not  the  art  of 
getting  results,  but  the  legerdemain  trick  of  getting  an 
appearance  of  results.  The  sentimentalist,  needless  to 
say,  fails  to  see  through  the  trick.  Moreover,  certain 
questionable  associations,  like  the  notorious  Mothers' 
Pension  League,  conduct  a  nation-wide  propaganda  for 
profit.  Such  subtle  stimulants  to  emotionalism  can  be 
neutralized  only  gradually  by  requiring  that  the  journal- 
ist's professional  training  shall  include  the  study  of 
economics,  finance,  social  legislation,  and  the  adminis- 
tration of  charities  and  correction;  and  by  nerving  social 


SENTIMENTALITY  AND   SOCIAL  REFORM  105 

workers  to  stand  resolutely  against  any  compromise  with 
buncombe. 

Certain  types  of  social  work,  too,  are  constantly  men- 
aced by  the  danger  of  cultivating  a  sentimental  attitude. 
A  settlement  head  resident  tells  me  she  has  tried  to  find 
out  why  so  few  students  attending  training  courses  for 
social  work  choose  settlement  work  as  their  career.  One 
young  woman  whom  she  asked  replied  directly,  ''It's 
because  I  don't  want  to  just  sit  around  and  be  an  in- 
fluence!" In  settlement  work  and  probation,  friendly 
visiting  and  amateur  case  work  there  are  always  some 
people  who  putter  about  everlastingly  and  never  get 
anywhere;  they  scheme  and  fuss  and  waste  their  own  and 
others'  energies  getting  and  maintaining  what  they  call 
a  "friendly  contact."  Now  all  social  welfare  work  rests 
at  last  upon  friendship,  but,  as  any  one  knows  who  has 
read  his  Emerson,  friendship  is  something  infinitely 
greater  than  emotional  ooze. 

It  should  be  perfectly  apparent  by  this  time  that  the 
Promised  Land  of  wholesome  social  life  caimot  be  seen 
clearly  by  eyes  dimmed  with  easy  tears;  nor  can  the  calls 
to  constructive  social  work  be  heard  above  the  thumping 
of  a  fluttery  heart.  Social  reform  of  any  and  every  kind 
must  be  thought  out  and  carried  through  in  the  scientific 
spirit.  No  one  should  insist  that  it  confine  itself  to 
statistics  and  a  cold,  hard  voice.  It  must,  if  it  be  truly 
scientific,  utilize  to  the  fullest  every  worthy  quality  of 
human  nature — sentiment,  humor,  imagination.  The 
great  religious  teachers,  the  master  dramatists,  the  makers 
of  modern  science,  knew  the  secret  of  communicating 
their  visions.  Huxley  could  kindle  enthusiasm  for  evo- 
lution just  as  effectively  as  Shakespeare  evoked  faith  in 
a  moral  universe  through  Macbeth  or  Lear.  Social 
reformers  should  likewise  take  their  cue.  In  a  word, 
social  reform  must  more  and  more  get  away  from  any 
suspicion  of  driveling  appeal  to  the  froth  in  human  nature, 
and  must  learn  the  art  of  purging  its  ideas  with  facts  and 


I06         THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

of  projecting  those  ideas  upon  the  plane  of  imagination. 
The  leaders  who  can  learn  this  art  will  steer  a  safe  and 
fruitful  course  between  the  timid  and  squint-eyed  stand- 
patter on  the  one  shore,  and,  on  the  other,  the  silly  dab- 
ster who  thinks  this  old  world  of  ours  can  be  changed  by 
a  turn  of  the  hand  or  a  quickened  heartbeat.  To  them 
must  be  committed  the  job  of  applying  W.  S.  Gilbert's 
famous  remedy  for  foolishness: 

"On  fire  that  glows 
With  heat  intense 
We  turn  the  hose 
Of  common  sense, 
And  out  it  goes 
At  small  expense." 

The  rule  is  admirable  if  the  streams  supplying  the  reser- 
voir can  be  kept  fresh  and  flowing. 

It  is  perhaps  beside  the  mark  to  inquire  which  science 
or  group  of  sciences  may  hold  the  master  key  to  this 
delicate  art.  But  at  least  enough  has  been  said  to  hint 
that  while  sociology  may  well  be  "first  aid"  to  sick  com- 
munities, it  is  not  to  be  considered  as  the  good-looking 
doctor  who  allows  female  hypochondriacs  to  weep  on 
his  shoulder  and  sentimentalize  over  their  imaginary 
woes.  Those  of  us  who  have  assumed  a  certain  leader- 
ship in  applied  sociology  must  set  our  faces  resolutely 
against  tremulous  haste  or  muddled  sentiment  in  the 
process  of  instigating  social  change.  And  while  maintain- 
ing hospitable,  elastic,  open  minds,  we  must  discipline 
ourselves  to  the  practice  of  that  decent  reticence  and 
self-control  which  ought  to  mark  a  real  profession,  and 
which  come  only  from  rigorously  thinking  through  a  mass 
of  evidence  proportionate  to  the  gravity  of  each  problem 
as  it  rises  in  the  day 's  work. 

Am  I  leaving  the  impression  that  the  social  reformer 
must  be  a  monster  of  blood  and  iron,  or  that  social  amel- 
ioration must  be  a  policy  of  Schrecklichkeit  as  bitter  and 


SENTIMENTALITY   AND   SOCIAL  REFORM  107 

unrelenting  as  natural  selection?  I  have,  it  is  true,  been 
emphasizing,  for  the  sake  of  arriving  at  a  proper  balance, 
the  negative  side  of  this  problem;  but  not  by  any  means 
to  the  exclusion  of  its  positive  aspects.  Because  we  are 
human  beings  dealing  with  other  human  beings  we  must 
have,  as  I  said  at  the  beginning,  warmth,  imagination, 
enthusiasm,  heroic  self-sacrifice,  and  plenty  of  them; 
but  all  these  amiable  qualities  must  be  conserved,  knit 
together,  focused,  and  reenforced  by  the  will  to  think 
clearly  and  the  will  to  know  profoundly.  When  faith 
and  love,  vision  and  disciplined  intelligence  can  be 
welded  into  one,  we  shall  have  such  a  corps  of  expert 
leadership  that  the  very  gates  of  hell  itself  shall  not  pre- 
vail against  us. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  DEAD   CENTER  IN  SOCIAL  WORK 


If  clocks  did  not  run  down  after  they  were  once  wound 
up,  and  if  people  and  things  did  not  tend  eternally  to 
gather  moss,  how  much  simpler  would  be  the  problems 
of  life;  how  much  simpler  our  social  work.  Indeed  it  is 
pretty  safe  to  say  that  there  would  be  no  social  work  at 
at.  Social  problems  arise  in  the  main  from  faulty  adap- 
tation. Some  persons  and  institutions  just  happen, 
others  live  too  long,  still  others  never  seem  to  reach  the 
point  where  you  can  say  of  them  that  they  are  really 
alive  at  all.  Some  live  and  work  fairly  well  for  a  time, 
then  suddenly  come  to  a  standstill.  Nothing  is  more 
embarrassing  than  a  machine  that  without  warning  stops 
functioning  at  a  critical  moment:  say,  a  machine  gun 
that  jams  on  the  firing  line,  an  automobile  that  goes  dead 
when  you  are  miles  from  home,  or  a  locomotive  that 
refuses  to  start  its  load  on  a  slippery  track.  In  mechan- 
ics this  phenomenon  is  called  the  "dead  center,"  which 
engineers  define  as  "the  position  of  a  crank  when  the 
turning  moment  exerted  on  it  is  zero",  or  "the  point 
where  a  connecting  rod  has  no  power  to  turn  a  crank." 

Discarding  all  thought  of  attempting  a  bad  pun  or  of 
applying  the  analogy  too  rigorously,  I  still  believe  a  sim- 
ilar phenomenon  is  common  in  communities  and  individ- 
uals. We  speak  of  "dead  towns"  or  "backwater  com- 
munities"; this  public  official  is  a  "dead  one,"  his  rival 
a  "live  wire";  students  "go  flat,"  athletes  "get  stale." 
A  Harvard  professor  boasted  that  he  hadn't  changed  a 
word  of  his  courses  in  thirty  years.    He  had  been  dead- 

io8 


THE   DEAD   CENTER  IN   SOCIAL  WORK  109 

centered  for  a  quarter  of  a  century.  A  successful  college 
president  told  me  a  while  ago  he  was  so  swamped  with 
routine  that  he  hadn't  thought  two  consecutive  fresh 
thoughts  in  five  years.  The  superintendent  of  La  Petite 
Roquette,  the  detention  prison  for  young  offenders  in 
Paris,  became  convinced  a  few  years  ago  that  the  dietary 
of  his  institution  was  insufficient,  and  directed  the  cooks 
to  modify  it  according  to  his  plans.  They  rebelled.  Had 
the  present  diet  not  been  going  along  nicely  for  a  hundred 
years?  Why  change?  Innovations  are  odious  to  the 
dead  or  sleeping.  When  I  entered  the  probation  office 
in  San  Francisco  a  good  many  years  ago  the  case  records 
were  kept  on  narrow  strips  of  cardboard  to  fit  into  an 
ordinary  folded  legal-document  envelope.  They  were 
almost  impossible  to  manage;  we  could  scarcely  get  them 
into  a  typewriter,  and,  if  we  succeeded,  but  little  could  be 
said  within  the  cramped  space.  Time,  energy,  and  pa- 
tience were  wasted;  our  work  was  hampered;  only  huge 
efforts  could  offset  the  inherent  clumsiness  and  deadness 
of  such  a  record  system.  I  waited  for  something  to  hap- 
pen, not  wanting  to  be  the  new  broom.  Something  did 
happen — the  great  earthquake  and  fire  came  along  and 
cleared  out  every  record  blank  of  every  sort,  made  a 
clean  sweep;  we  had  to  begin  from  the  bottom.  What  an 
opportunity  for  a  new  system !  Yet  think  of  the  price — 
Providence  and  a  hundred-million-dollar  fire — to  jerk  us 
out  of  our  dead  center. 

Such  inertia  is  overwhelmingly  expensive.  It  is  the 
most  costly  phase  of  "good  works";  it  forms  by  far  the 
largest  part  of  our  bill  of  wastage.  When  we  talk  of  econ- 
omy and  efficiency  or  conservation  of  natural  and  human 
resources  we  mean  in  the  main  overcoming  inertia,  rout- 
ing somebody  or  some  institution  out  of  a  state  of  sus- 
pended animation.  And  most  of  the  talk  about  scientific 
management  or  canons  of  efficiency  centers  about  this 
same  problem  of  applying  energies,  now  wasted,  to  con- 
necting rods  in  such  a  way  that  cranks  will  turn. 


no         THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

Civilization  might  be  defined  as  an  attempt  to  achieve 
steadiness,  persistence,  and  economy  in  the  application 
of  energy.  The  animal  is  born  with  instincts  and  ac- 
quires habits  which  act  as  his  balance  wheel,  but  only 
in  rare  instances  does  he  create  of  himself  anything  to 
correspond  to  the  human  institution  as  a  steadier.  De- 
spite instincts  and  habits  both  animal  and  primitive 
man  lack  the  persistence  and  continuity  of  effort  which 
we  ascribe  to  civilized  man.  The  great  problem  of  social 
evolution  seems  to  have  been  the  changing  of  an  alter- 
nating current  into  a  steady  flow,  the  substitution  of 
ideals,  motives,  disciplines,  institutional  forms  and  reg- 
ulated social  pressure  for  the  mere  ebb  and  flow  of  primal 
instinct  and  feeling.  But  the  goal  is  not  yet  achieved. 
You  and  I  still  vibrate  between  the  pit  and  the  seventh 
heaven.  Social  institutions,  like  factories,  vary  in  their 
day-by-day  output.  And  steadiness  may  be  so  exagger- 
ated as  to  become  a  vice  instead  of  a  virtue. 

Says  Mr.  Dooley: 

"Yes,  Prosperity  has  come  hoUerin'  an'  screamin*.  To  read 
th'  papers,  it  seems  to  be  a  kind  iv  vagrancy  law.  No  wan  can 
loaf  anny  more.  .  .  Prosperity  grabs  ivry  man  be  th'  neck,  an* 
sets  him  shovelin '  slag  or  coke  or  runnin '  up  an '  down  a  ladder 
with  a  hod  iv  mortar.  It  won 't  let  the  wurruld  rest.  .  .  It  goes 
around  Hke  a  poHsman  givin '  th '  hot  f ut  to  happy  people  that  are 
snoozin'  in  th'  sun.  'Get  up,'  says  Prosperity.  'Get  up,  an' 
hustle  over  to  th'  rollin'  mills:  there's  a  man  over  there  wants  ye 
to  carry  a  ton  iv  coal  on  ye  'er  back.'  'But  I  don 't  want  to  wurruk,' 
says  th '  lad.  '  I  'm  very  comfortable  th '  way  I  am.'  '  It  makes  no 
difference,'  says  Prosperity.  '  Ye  've  got  to  do  ye  'er  lick.  Wurruk 
f  'r  th '  night  is  coming.'  Get  out  an '  hustle.  Wurruk,  or  ye  can 't 
be  unhappy;  an'  if  th'  wurruld  isn't  unhappy,  they'se  no  such 
thing  as  Prosperity." 

Whether  we  must  be  ceaselessly  active  or  work  inter- 
mittently can  only  be  determined  pragmatically.  By 
our  fruits  must  we  be  judged.  Here,  then,  comes  in  the 
use  of  scientific  tests,  of  measurements,  of  gradings. 


THii   DEAD   CENTER  IN   SOCIAL  WORK  III 

II 

In  the  judgment  cf  social  work,  scientific  efificiency 
tests  will  have  to  be  applied  to  both  institutions  and 
individuals.  Let  us  begin  with  the  institution.  A  survey- 
will  usually  bring  out  the  state  of  a  community's  armor 
for  social  defense;  it  will  show  the  absolute  gaps  that 
need  filling,  the  spots  where  the  armor  is  worn  thin,  the 
places  where  it  is  so  thick  that  instead  of  protecting  the 
community,  the  community  must  spend  itself  in  support- 
ing this  dead  weight.  From  this  standpoint  social  sur- 
veys must  more  and  more  take  on  the  character  of  city 
plans;  and  the  arrangement  and  distribution  of  institu- 
tions to  meet  community  needs  should  become  more  and 
more  a  branch  of  social  and  civic  architecture. 

A  community  that  tolerates  unnecessary  duplication 
of  its  charitable  plant  is  dead-centered.  But  how  much 
duplication  is  necessary  or  permissible?  Should  every 
group  of  well-intentioned  women  or  every  religious  sect 
be  allowed  to  start  an  orphanage  or  hospital  or  mission 
merely  because  they  want  to?  No  more  than  every 
person  who  has  a  grievance,  however  petty,  should  be 
allowed  to  indulge  himself  in  the  joy  of  litigation.  We  be- 
gin to  recognize  that  private  charity  is  a  public  trust  and 
have  made  a  start  at  inspection  and  licensing,  but  only 
a  bare  start.  To  make  that  supervision  fair,  some  tech- 
nique of  accurate  judgment  has  yet  to  be  worked  out. 
This  applies  equally  well  to  the  problem  of  deciding 
when  a  particular  institution  is  dead-centered,  i.  e.,  when 
it  has  outlived  its  usefulness.  Social  structures,  like  the 
human  appendix  and  other  vestigial  organs,  tend  to  per- 
sist long  after  their  original  contribution  to  well-being 
has  been  used  up.  Have  we  not  all  encountered  organ- 
izations like  the  legendary  Ford  automobile  that  ran 
nine  miles  without  gasoline,  simply  on  its  reputation? 
The  history  of  philanthropy  is  full  of  examples  of  the 
dead  hand,  the  maladjusted  endowment,  of  "vested 
rights"  to  doing  good  of  a  highly  needless  and  even  a 


112         THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

vicious  kind  and  in  a  particularly  heedless  way.  In  no 
other  field,  perhaps,  does  time  make  ancient  good  so 
quickly  and  manifestly  uncouth. 

Social  control  over  vestigial  philanthropy  must  become 
very  much  more  vigorous  before  we  can  be  assured  of  re- 
lief from  the  inefficiency  and  loss  it  now  entails.  But 
again,  we  run  against  the  difiiculty  of  not  having  a  sound 
system  of  grading.  We  assume,  at  least  for  all  practical 
purposes,  that  we  can  tell  when  a  man  is  dead.  The  doctor 
has  certain  objective  tests  like  holding  a  mirror  over  the 
man 's  mouth.  And  the  coroner 's  jury  solemnly  and  con- 
fidently register  the  verdict  that  So-and-So  has  yielded 
up  his  vital  spark  for  good  and  all.  But  where  is  the 
doctor  or  coroner's  jury  who  can  perform  the  same  func- 
tions of  test  and  autopsy  upon  a  suspect  charitable  insti- 
tution? What  sort  of  mirror  could  be  devised,  or  how 
secure  a  coroner's  jury  for  such  a  job?  Social  work  is 
still  graded  largely  by  whim,  by  sentimentaHty,  by  con- 
tagious approval  or  disapproval  radiating  from  some 
powerful  personaHty;  by  fad  or  craze;  by  petty  griev- 
ance or  pettier  ambition,  vanity  or  pique.  These  are 
the  attitudes  that  determine  newspaper  backing  or 
criticism;  that  feed  or  dry  up  reservoirs  of  private  bene- 
faction; that  dictate  legislative  votes  and  appropriations. 

Some  provision  must  be  made  for  pruning  dead  social 
branches  or  for  absorbing  useless  and  cumbersome  accu- 
mulations of  social  tissue  in  the  form  of  bequests,  endow- 
ments, and  the  other  elements  of  philanthropic  equip- 
ment. I  cannot  go  into  the  details  of  such  a  policy  of 
social  control,  nor  am  I  competent  if  I  had  the  time.  I  may 
suggest,  however,  that  as  social  life  is  organic  and  in  a 
constant  state  of  flux,  and  as  our  bodies  are  said  to 
undergo  a  complete  change  every  seven  years,  we  ought  to 
take  account  of  our  social  equipment  at  least  every  ten 
years  and  ought  to  provide  for  a  technique  of  survey, 
grading,  and  judgment,  accurate  and  rigorous  enough  to 
relieve  us  of  the  incubus  of  charitable  survivals  and  to  in- 


THE  DEAD  CENTER  IN   SOCIAL  WORK  I13 

sure  that  no  really  useful  organization  for  social  welfare 
will  be  cut  off. 

But,  you  may  say,  why  not  trust  to  natural  selection 
to  perform  this  useful  act  of  review?  Of  course  in 
the  long  run  the  principle  of  selection  does  operate, 
and  the  inefficient  or  dead  institution  will  be  ex- 
terminated. But  social  Hfe  by  its  very  nature  tends  to 
nulHfy  this  rude  selective  process.  Hence  things  some- 
times survive  because  of  a  fictive  value.  The  business 
of  the  statesman  and  social  worker,  then,  is  to  point  out 
real  values,  to  rub  off  the  tinsel,  to  show  up  the  fool's  gold 
and  uncover  the  unmistakable  precious  metal.  How 
much  of  real  gold  and  how  much  of  gold  brick  is  there  in 
the  philanthropy  of  your  community?  You  must  be  able, 
social  workers,  to  assay  your  social  agencies  for  the  bene- 
fit of  an  all  too  credulous  public  that  still  fails  to  see  how 
coy  looks  and  fair  words  do  not  mean  sound  social  work. 

Another  phase  of  organized  philanthropy  must  be 
passed  over  with  bare  mention.  Organized  welfare  work 
means  system.  But  it  means  dead  center  when  it  is  so 
thoroughly  reduced  to  fixed  rule  and  routine  that  every- 
body knows  just  what  to  expect.  In  other  words,  the 
sociological  principle  of  anticipation  comes  into  play. 
Thus  the  beggar  learns  to  know  that  the  business  man  or 
the  charity  society  of  a  certain  neighborhood  relaxes  at 
certain  seasons;  the  tramp  knows  a  given  house  or  town 
as  "easy";  deserting  husbands  know  the  compassion  of 
a  certain  group  of  benevolent  women  for  deserted  waves ; 
the  young  delinquent  soon  learns  to  ''know  the  ropes" 
of  court  procedure ;  the  alien  learns  by  heart  the  answers 
he  must  make  to  get  his  naturalization  papers;  the  shop- 
keeper notices  that  cheap  boarding  houses  for  young 
women  are  the  hobby  of  some  of  his  fellow  citizens  and 
figures  that  he  can  pay  lower  wages.  The  really  neces- 
sitious  frequently  hide  their  misery  rather  than  be  drawn 
through  the  knothole  of  an  unvarying  procedure  of  in- 
vestigation.    A  moribund  organization  stands  by  its 


114         THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

"principles,"  its  system,  its  methods;  it  is  inflexible;  be- 
lieves in  creation  by  fiat  and  plenary  revelation;  shies  at 
any  notion  of  progressive  development  of  truth.  The 
live  organization  is  adaptive,  mobile;  its  guiding  princi- 
ple is  to  anticipate  anticipation. 

Ill 

Did  you  ever  see  a  town  or  a  social  agency  suddenly 
blaze  out  into  new  life  as  by  spontaneous  combustion? 
I  never  did.  The  reason  is  that  such  things  don't  happen. 
Commmiities  tend  toward  the  thick  mud  of  the  rut  and 
do  not  know  the  art  of  pulling  themselves  out  by  their 
own  bootstraps.  When  an  agency  or  town  gets  a  new 
lease  of  life  it  is  usually  because  of  crisis:  new  blood, 
strangers  who  come  with  ideas,  angels  bearing  visions, 
a  new  invention,  the  sudden  strain  of  having  to  compete 
with  a  rival,  or  threatened  extinction.  Usually  the  iner- 
tia is  overcome,  new  power  added,  the  crank  set  in  mo- 
tion once  more,  by  personalities  whether  hostile  or 
friendly.  Just  because  dead-centered  persons  make  dead- 
centered  agencies  and  because  live  wires  vivify  social  in- 
stitutions, it  is  vital  to  know  how  people  work,  what  feeds 
their  energies,  what  makes  them  "peter  out,"  what  gives 
them  second  wind,  and  what  finally  sends  them  to  the 
scrap  heap. 

This  is  a  field  which  scientific  investigation  has  barely 
descried  so  far.  We  hear  of  efficiency  systems  in  factory 
management,  of  vocational  guidance,  and  of  business 
psychology.  But  of  this  interesting  attempt  to  deter- 
mine the  principles  of  liveness  and  deadness  in  the  busi- 
ness world,  little  account  has  been  taken  in  social  work. 
Once  or  twice  within  the  last  year  or  so  a  demand  has 
been  made  that  we  social  workers  analyze  ourselves  and 
our  jobs.  But  Httle  or  no  response  came.  With  all  the 
difiidence  born  of  tackling  a  new  field  I  prepared  a  set  of 
questions  which  were  submitted  to  several  hundred  social 
workers  in  various  fields  and  in  several  cities.    The  idea  of 


THE   CENTER   DEAD  IN   SOCIAL  WORK  II5 

the  questionnaire  was  to  find  out  whether  social  workers 
in  their  daily  rounds  were  exceptions  to  the  general  psy- 
chological principle  that  people  work  by  ups  and  downs, 
that  they  get  into  ruts,  that  they  strike  dead  centers. 
I  wanted  to  find  out  primarily  the  things  or  conditions 
which  hinder  the  individual  from  doing  his  best,  and 
which  multiphed  and  prolonged  finally  land  him  in  the 
dumps  of  inefficiency  or  self-reproach. 

So  far  no  detailed  individual  intensive  tests  have  been 
devised  for  social  workers  such  as  the  experimental  pys- 
chologists  have  applied  to  the  learning  process  in  general 
or  to  such  problems  as  telegraphy,  foreign  languages, 
typewriting,  and  stenography.  These  things  can  be  re- 
duced to  measurements  and  order  more  easily  than  so- 
cial work.  The  laboratory  tester  can  set  down  so  many 
words  per  minute  as  my  output  in  telegraphy  to-day ;  so 
many  to-morrow;  so  many  next  week,  next  month,  in 
three  months,  half  a  year,  and  so  on.  He  can  plot  my 
curve  of  learning  or  productivity  easily  enough,  noting 
my  gains  in  power,  my  lapses  and  my  steady  ploddings. 
He  can  also  discover  many  of  the  factors  back  of  my  vari- 
ations in  accomplishment.  But  the  kaleidoscopic  vari- 
ety of  social  work  and  the  inherent  difficulty  of  reducing 
that  variety  to  some  measurable  unit  makes  our  prob- 
lem much  more  complex.  What  should  be  our  unit 
quantity?  The  number  of  cases  handled  or  solved  per 
day?  Families  treated  or  rehabilitated?  Boys  saved 
or  improved?  Dispensary  patients  cured  or  visited? 
Homeless  men  fed,  settled  down,  married,  put  to  work, 
or  passed  on?  Ex-convicts  reclaimed?  Drunkards  and 
would-be  suicides  salvaged?  Number  of  hours  or  days 
per  case?  Per  capita  cost?  Energy  expended?  Calories 
of  food  used?  You  see  the  complexities.  They  have 
nothing  to  do  with  whether  social  work  is  a  profession  or 
not,  for  the  same  complexities  crop  out  in  the  attempt  to 
apply  efl&ciency  tests  to  preaching,  medicine,  law,  and 
teaching.    The  prime  difficulty  is  that  all  these  profes- 


ii6 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 


sions  are  creating — as  their  chief  business — certain  intan- 
gible, imponderable  values,  which  though  almost  be- 
yond human  measurement  are  nevertheless  the  most  real 
things  of  life.  Who  can  measure  health  or  spiritual  well- 
being  or  culture  in  absolute  units?  Yet  some  measure, 
either  direct  or  indirect,  must  be  found  to  prevent  pro- 
fessional misfits,  wastage  of  valuable  energy,  and  the 
sense  of  futility  which  sometimes  threatens  to  engulf  the 
most  poised  and  optimistic  of  us. 

During  the  past  fifteen  years  several  educational 
psychologists  (Bryan  and  Harter,  Swift,  Johnson,  Book, 
Thorndike  and  others)  have  been  experimenting  on  the 
process  of  learning.  All  agree  that  progress  in  learning 
is  never  steady  but  always  by  jumps.  In  diagraming 
their  results,  figures  like  the  following  appear: 


I:  Telegraphy  (Bryan 

and  Harter). 
H:  Writing  Shorthand 
(Swift). 
Ill:  Reading  Shorthand 

(Swift). 
IV:  Balltossing  (Thorndike). 
V:  Russian  (Swift). 


THE  DEAD  CENTER  IN   SOCIAL  WORK  I17 

Each  of  these  curves  shows  characteristic  peaks  and  val- 
leys connected  usually  by  fairly  level  spaces,  called  techni- 
cally "plateaus  of  learning."  These  plateaus  mark  the 
learning  of  chemistry,  of  telegraphy,  foreign  language, 
music,  mathematics,  ball-tossing,  whist,  chess,  and  check- 
ers.   To  adopt  my  own  term  they  represent  deadcenters. 

Now  some  extremely  interesting  conclusions  crop  out 
of  these  experiments  in  locating  and  diagnosing  dead 
centers,  which  are  highly  significant  to  the  learning 
of  technique  in  social  work.  In  learning  a  foreign  lan- 
guage two  great  plateaus  occur:  the  first  just  below  the 
point  of  so-called  "working  proficiency";  the  second, 
just  below  "complete  mastery."  Another  point  of  vital 
importance  is  that  "equal  amounts  of  work  do  not  pro- 
duce equivalent  results;"  that  is,  the  time  element  in 
learning  must  always  be  reckoned  with  in  determining 
the  relation  between  effort  and  result.  Further,  one  of 
the  salient  marks  of  learning  is  habit  or  automatic  con- 
trol, and  this  automatization  goes  on  throughout  the 
process  of  learning,  but  suffers  ups  and  downs.  Still 
more  significant  is  the  fact  that  dead  centers  suddenly 
disappear  almost  overnight,  just  as  spring  some  April 
evening  seems  to  summon  every  reserve  to  break  through 
the  crust  of  winter,  and  we  wake  next  morning  to  a  world 
of  new  glory,  or  as  names  suddenly  pop  into  our  heads 
after  long  periods  of  ardent  quest  in  vain. 

Granting  that  plateaus  or  dead  centers  occur,  what  do 
they  mean?  You  may  interpret  them  as  "resting  places 
in  effort"  or  breathing  places  or  periods  of  assimilation, 
reflection,  digestion,  adjustment,  incubation,  like  the 
lulls  between  the  assaults  on  Verdun.  They  warn  of 
conscious  or  unconscious  mental  revolt  against  further 
crowding  and  cramming;  they  are  hints  of  mental  or 
moral  indigestion.  "Plateaus  have  at  least  two  causes. 
Considered  from  the  point  of  view  of  automatization 
they  are  resting  places.  The  learner  has  overshot  his 
permanent  power  and  must  wait  until  the  automatization 


Il8         THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

is  perfected.  They  are  also  due  to  a  slump  in  enthusiasm. 
Monotony  overcomes  the  learner.  Further,  these  two 
causes  react  upon  one  another.  .  ."  In  the  study  of 
chemistry  at  the  University  of  Indiana  a  plateau  known 
as  "the  period  of  depression"  was  recognized.  Students 
showed  a  phase  of  rapid  improvement  in  the  first  months, 
followed  by  a  long  period  of  slow  progress.  This  was 
not  due  to  any  inferiority  in  the  latter  part  of  the  labora- 
tory manual.  It  came  from  the  difficulty  in  assimilating 
the  large  number  of  elementary  facts  learned  at  the 
beginning.  When  the  student's  attention  could  finally 
be  turned  from  this  mastering  of  tools  his  curve  began 
to  rise  again. 

We  can  state  the  causes  of  dead  centers  and  their  mas- 
tery more  explicitly.  Physical  conditions  such  as  fatigue, 
loss  of  sleep,  and  lowered  vitality  may  mean  loss  of  self- 
control.  Swift,  in  his  experiment  on  learning  Russian, 
found  that  "a  slight  fatigue  or  any  mental  disturbance 
whatever"  drove  away  newly  acquired  technical  skill 
and  caused  a  relapse  into  cruder  methods.  Periods  of 
rest  like  the  Sunday  interval  register  themselves  in  rises 
of  ability.  Depression  associated  with  monotony  may 
not  cause  plateaus  but  seems  to  prolong  them.  Return- 
ing pleasure  and  confidence  prophesy  new  advances. 
Strong  distractions  scatter  energy  and  hinder  the  learn- 
ing process.  Waning  interest,  from  whatever  the  cause, 
is  perhaps  the  surest  drag  weight  to  learning  and  good 
work.  Taking  off  the  keen  edge  of  enthusiasm  lessens 
one's  output.  Pleasure  in  success  causes  a  learner  to 
redouble  his  efforts.  Sense  of  strain  in  trying  to  unlearn 
bad  habits  or  to  cram  facts  and  methods  induces  depres- 
sion. A  small  boy  already  stuffed  to  the  bursting  point 
and  being  plied  with  yet  more  food  said  amiably  that  he 
* '  could  still  chew  but  couldn  't  swaller ;  "  had  he  been  plied 
with  such  distasteful  stuffs  as  knowledge  or  methods  he, 
like  us,  would  have  been  less  amiable.  There  are  limits 
to  our  absorptive  capacity. 


THE  DEAD   CENTER  IN   SOCIAL  WORK  II9 

In  learning  typewriting  the  effort  to  spurt  is  appar- 
ently "helpful  if  not  too  severe,  but  overstrain  exhausts 
the  learner  and  hinders  his  progress  by  bringing  into  the 
focus  of  consciousness  processes  that  serve  him  best  when 
in  the  background."  In  telegraphy  it  is  intense  effort 
which  educates.  Each  new  step  costs  more  than  the 
former.  Hence  between  sixty  and  seventy-five  per  cent 
of  beginners  become  discouraged  upon  the  plateaus  of 
the  curve  just  below  the  main-line  rate  (average,  toler- 
able skill).  "As  a  rule  ordinary  operators  will  not  make 
the  painful  effort  necessary  to  become  experts." 

One  of  the  evidences  of  mastery  in  one's  profession 
seems  to  be  a  certain  independence  of  influences  which 
strongly  affect  the  beginner.  External  influences  are 
said  to  exert  a  very  profound  effect  upon  inexperienced 
telegraph  operators;  they  suffer  from  stage  fright,  while 
older  experts  become  even  more  fluent  under  subjective 
disturbances  like  fear  and  anger.  So  clear  is  this  fact 
that  Bryan  and  Harter  generalized  it  into  the  rule  that 
emotion  stimulates  the  expert,  but  paralyzes  the  beginner. 

Now  what  are  the  bearings  upon  social  work  of  these 
psychological  experiments?  How  does  cramming  or 
overtraining,  or  bad  training  or  fatigue,  or  emotion 
affect  the  social  worker?  Can  a  social  worker  get  second 
wind  and  climb  above  his  plateau?  Will  a  consuming 
interest  or  high  emulation  express  itself  in  better  case 
work?  Does  jealousy  or  fear  paralyze  him?  Does  a 
sense  of  being  a  misfit  hamper  one?  Do  social  workers 
know  themselves?  Can  they  answer  such  simple  ques- 
tions as:  Does  your  job  fit  you  well  or  does  it  chafe  and 
pinch  and  strain  like  a  badly  shaped  shoe  or  corset?  Does 
it  blister  your  conscience  and  spoil  your  good  temper? 
Will  time  reduce  the  stiffness  and  rubbing,  or  is  the 
misfit  permanent?  Can  you  adapt  by  growing  callous 
places  in  your  conscience  and  a  permanent  kink  in  your 
temper?  Would  vocational  guidance  and  advice  have 
helped  you? 


120         THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

These,  and  many  others  like  them,  were  the  question- 
ings that  prompted  the  wording  of  my  questionnaire. 
For  the  answers  let  me  cite  replies  sent  in  by  social 
workers.  They  come  from  many  fields,  from  organized 
charity,  probation,  hospital  social  service,  district  nurs- 
ing, institutional  teaching,  settlement,  child-placing, 
travelers'  aid,  boys'  club,  civic  club,  and  municipal 
research  work.  They  cover  varied  periods  of  service 
from  a  few  months  to  forty  years.  The  training  repre- 
sented varies  quite  as  much,  ranging  from  incompleted 
grammar  school  to  University  and  Schools  of  Philan- 
thropy. 

The  general  tone  of  the  returns  is  highly  optimistic. 
Practically  all  admit  ups  and  downs,  plateaus  and  dead 
centers  in  their  work.  Their  psychology  is  the  psy- 
chology of  the  old  plantation  refrain:  "Sometimes  I'se 
up,  sometimes  I'se  down,  sometimes  I'se  almost  level 
wid  de  groun'."  But  there  seem  to  have  been  few  con- 
scious cases  of  out-and-out  misfit.  A  partial  explanation 
is  the  fact  that  most  of  those  who  reported  went  into 
social  work  because  they  liked  it,  because  they  were 
"called  to  service,"  or  because  it  was  the  logical  outcome 
of  previous  studies;  one  went  so  far  as  to  say  that  it  was 
"innate  desire"  that  impelled  to  social  work.  Another 
explanation  is  that  many  of  these  workers  had  been  at 
their  posts  such  a  short  time  that  the  first  exaltation  and 
enthusiasm,  the  wonder  of  it  all,  had  not  yet  passed  away. 

Partly  because  of  this  general  satisfaction,  the  attempts 
to  measure  personal  efficiency  and  fitness  for  the  work 
are  comparatively  rare.  Few  if  any  sound  objective 
methods  have  been  tried.  Several  pleaded  so  much  work 
or  such  varied  work  that  no  time  was  left  for  self-analysis 
or  measurement.  One  was  contented  with  a  general 
dififused  satisfaction  as  the  measure  of  success.  Some 
experience  decreasing  worry  and  friction.  One  says: 
"Each  year  I  finish  in  better  shape  physically  and  ner- 
vously.   Cases  seem  less  complicated  and  are  not  so  apt 


THE  DEAD   CENTER  IN   SOCIAL  WORK  121 

to  get  on  my  nerves."  Others  record  gains  in  poise  and 
confidence.  Somewhat  more  definite  is  this  case:  ''The 
test  of  my  efficiency  has  come  through  noting  the  in- 
creasing ease  with  which  I  carry  responsibility,  supervise 
the  work  of  other  people,  and  the  ability  to  keep  a  large 
amount  of  work  in  order."  One  suggests  this  rather 
illuminating  test:  "I  am  now  able  to  leave  a  greater 
number  of  clients  in  a  satisfied  mood."  Another  sets 
down  the  increasingly  intelligent  use  of  outside  organi- 
zations as  an  index  of  improvement.  The  ability  to  get 
at  the  core  of  a  problem,  to  grasp  a  situation  more 
quickly,  to  cut  down  the  expenditure  of  time  and  energy 
seem  to  be  the  commonest  tests.  Says  one:  "I  find  I 
spend  less  time  per  call,  return  for  information  overlooked 
less  frequently,  can  gain  the  cordial  interest  of  people 
more  quickly,"  etc.  On  the  other  hand,  one  worker 
reports  a  gain  in  efficiency  because  she  now  spends  at 
least  twice  and  often  thrice  as  much  time  and  energy  on 
cases  as  she  did  a  year  ago,  and  claims  as  a  result  a  larger 
percentage  of  successful  cases.  Some  have  adopted  more 
nearly  objective  tests.  One  reports  running  over  the 
results  produced  under  given  circumstances  as  compared 
with  similar  results  produced  in  former  years.  Several 
use  a  "daily  log"  somewhat  like  the  piece- time  schedules 
of  the  shop  efficiency  managers.  These,  while  full  of 
promise,  need  to  be  widely  extended  before  they  attain 
full  scientific  usefulness.  One  person  reports  taking  a 
few  minutes  each  day  to  get  a  perspective,  to  sift  out  the 
important  from  the  trivial,  to  coordinate  work.  Another 
uses  a  quarterly  test:  "Every  three  months  I  make  a 
review  of  work  and  mental  attitude  for  three  things: 
(i)  results;  (2)  wastage  of  time  and  uimecessary  acts; 
(3)  mistakes."  Another  makes  a  careful  analysis  at 
least  once  a  year,  and  occasional  time  studies.  In  still 
another  case  which  I  have  been  watching  for  many 
months  with  great  interest,  the  worker  has  been  patiently 
trying  a  recapitulation  and  study  of  twelve  years'  work 


122         THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND    SOCIAL  WORK 

in  one  district  of  a  large  city,  using  every  statistical 
method  possible,  with  the  utmost  detachment  of  mind, 
in  the  effort  to  arrive  at  a  judgment  of  fitness  in  terms 
of  concrete  accomplishment. 

There  is  abundant  evidence  that  social  workers,  like 
other  learners  and  workers,  experience  periodical  losses 
of  efficiency.  The  causes  are  multifarious.  Most  of  them 
seem  to  proceed  from  the  nature  of  the  worker  himself, 
but  some  also  lie  in  adverse  conditions  surrounding  the 
work.  Overwork  stands  easily  first,  numerically,  as  a 
depressive  influence.  This  tallies  closely  with  the  ex- 
periments of  the  psychologists.  Crowding  or  cramming 
begets  a  feeling  of  futility.  It  is  only  fair  to  say,  however, 
that  very  often  a  sense  of  being  overworked  is  really  only 
failure  to  perceive  general  unfitness  for  the  job  or  waste- 
ful methods  or  inadequate  training.  One  writer  says 
frankly  on  this  latter  point,  "The  broader  one's  training, 
the  more  one's  work  is  simplified."  Nerve  exhaustion, 
fatigue  (cumulative  fatigue,  one  reports),  loss  of  sleep, 
bad  health,  variations  in  vitality  and  temperamental 
twists,  figure  frequently  in  these  analyses.  Eye  strain 
is  not  to  be  overlooked  here  any  more  than  in  the  conduct 
of  delinquent  children  as  a  factor  in  irritability  and 
wasted  effort.  But  worry  is,  next  to  overwork,  the  chief 
hamper  reported ;  nearly  a  third  of  all  the  returns  admit 
this  vampire;  worry  is  a  factor  in  overwork  and  all  its 
train  of  evil  consequences.  But,  as  with  the  sense  of 
crowding,  worry  may  be  only  a  symptom  of  maladapta- 
tion.  It  may  come  also  from  the  strain  of  trying  to  live 
up  to  one's  idea  of  his  own  precious  ego.  In  whatever 
guise  it  may  appear,  worry  is  always  and  everywhere 
fear;  and  fear  is  the  shortest  known  road  to  paralysis  and 
death. 

Whether  one  is  too  young  or  too  old  for  his  job  is  a 
difficult  and  delicate  question  to  answer;  but  I  have  found 
several  people  who  felt  that  their  youth  frequently  hin- 
dered good  work.    Nobody  seemed  to  feel  too  old,  and 


THE  DEAD  CENTER  IN  SOCIAL  WORK  1 23 

nobody  felt  it  incumbent  to  propose  a  definite  dead  line 
beyond  which  a  social  worker  should  retire  to  the  shelf. 
One  person  suggested,  however,  that  fifty-five  might  be 
too  old  for  certain  kinds  of  work  with  youths;  and  an- 
other that  no  philanthropist  so  far  had  taken  thought  for 
"the  comfort  of  worn-out  charity  workers."  Sex  seems 
to  be  no  hamper,  largely  for  the  reason  that  it  is  usually 
reckoned  with  by  those  responsible  for  electing  workers 
to  their  positions.  Size,  however,  is  noted  by  one  worker 
as  of  importance.  She  charges  that  her  short  stature 
sometimes  loses  her  the  respect  of  those  whom  height 
would  impress. 

Somewhat  more  important  then  these  are  the  adverse 
effects  of  lack  of  cooperation  on  the  part  of  fellow  work- 
ers or  the  community.  Some  fifteen  per  cent  report  this. 
One  writes:  ''My  greatest  discouragement  comes  from  a 
lack  of  understanding  on  the  part  of  the  general  public." 
Another  complains  that  volunteers  take  the  bit  in  their 
teeth  and  refuse  to  run  in  step  with  trained  workers. 
But  on  the  whole  the  esprit  de  corps  seems  to  be  fairly 
satisfactory. 

The  nature  of  the  work  itself  drains  off  the  energies  of 
many.  The  recurrent  sight  and  smell  of  misery,  the 
depressing  stories,  the  monotony  of  routine,  the  lack  of 
competent  direction  and  leadership,  the  sense  of  spend- 
ing huge  energies  for  trifling  results,  the  enormous  sense 
of  responsibility  in  dealing  with  human  destinies,  are 
set  down  as  sources  of  wastage.  The  most  important 
factor  in  depression,  writes  one  shrewd  observer,  "is  the 
result  of  watching  the  work  of  prominent  social  workers. 
They  seem  to  put  so  much  energy  into  their  work  and 
yet  are  thwarted  to  such  a  degree  that  one  naturally 
wonders  if  it  is  worth  while."  Another  confesses  frankly 
dropping  occasionally  into  the  dumps  as  the  result  of 
feeling  that  our  work  tends  to  prolong  bad  social  condi- 
tions. There  is  also  the  feeling  of  futility,  closely  asso- 
ciated with  overwork,  which  comes  from  the  superficial 


124         THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT  AND  SOCIAL  WORK 

slapdash  way  in  which  many  of  us  have  to  turn  off  our 
multiform  tasks.  The  bewildering  variety  of  problems 
which  confront  the  social  worker  in  every  field  baffles 
and  disheartens  particularly  the  beginner.  Usually, 
however,  he  develops  some  specialized  talent  or  enough 
general  experience  to  enable  him  to  see  the  common 
underlying  elements  in  superficial  diversities. 

I  do  not  find  that  as  a  rule  the  difficulty  of  a  job  de- 
presses the  vigorous,  properly  trained  worker.  Occa- 
sionally it  discourages,  but  more  frequently  it  seems  to 
act  as  a  challenge,  it  unlooses  the  reserves  of  pride  and 
grit.  As  in  maternity,  so  in  some  social  jobs,  knowledge 
that  when  one  says  A  he  must  also  say  B  nerves  to  the 
highest  effort.  I  recall  my  own  case.  A  friend  who  was 
anxious  to  induct  me  to  a  certain  office  took  me  before 
the  Board  controlling  it.  The  Board  was  hospitable, 
with  one  exception — a  man  who  was  anxious  to  appoint 
one  of  his  proteges.  He  pointed  out  the  difficulties  of 
the  job  and  called  attention  to  my  deceptively  youthful 
appearance.  Finally,  slapping  his  fat  legs  for  emphasis, 
he  thundered  at  me,  ^'Now  do  you  think  you  can  do  this 
work?"  My  self-respect  and  pride  were  chafed,  so  I 
summoned  my  most  leonine  expression  and  shot  back 
at  him,  "I've  got  to  do  it."  He  voted  for  me  at  once. 
Criticism  nerves  many  people  apparently  to  extra  effort 
merely  to  disprove  the  critic;  it  begets  the  attitude  of 
*'I'll  show  you;"  but  it  is  rather  a  costly  way  of  securing 
high  effort  and  large  output. 

Low  salaries  and  insufficient  funds  play  a  small  role 
as  direct  factors  in  "plateaus";  but  they  may  cut  an  un- 
suspectedly  large  figure  indirectly.  On  the  whole  I  find 
social  workers  quite  calm  on  the  subject  of  salaries;  they 
recognize  that  many  of  them  are  absurdly  "sweated," 
but  accept  that  fact  as  they  would  perhaps  the  whims  of 
climate,  ad  majorem  gloriam  Dei!  Lack  of  promotion  is 
a  minor  factor  also,  though  in  combination  with  other 
factors  must  react  unfavorably.     Social  workers  seem 


THE   DEAD   CENTER  IN  SOCIAL  WORK  12$ 

also  to  obey  the  gospel  injunction  to  take  no  thought  for 
the  morrow ;  for  almost  without  exception  they  deny  any 
fear  of  the  future.  Some  write  emphatically  that  there 
is  just  as  much  future  for  them  as  they  care  to  make. 
One  says,  "I  don't  care  a  pin  about  the  future."  In  de- 
fault of  decisive  evidence  I  put  this  down  to  Henley's 
philosophy  in  his  "Invictis"  (*'I  am  the  captain  of  my 
soul,"  etc.)  rather  than  to  possible  impending  matrimony! 
Uncertainty  about  being  able  to  hold  one's  job  seems  to 
be  about  equally  balanced  by  the  inertia,  complacency, 
and  lack  of  stimulus  which  come  from  holding  endowed 
positions. 

Very  little  complaint  is  registered  on  the  score  of  com- 
munity suspicion  or  hostility.  On  the  whole,  relations 
seem  to  have  been  cordial.  But  several  cases  to  the  con- 
trary stand  out,  with  rather  sad  evidences  of  retarded 
work  as  a  result.  Both  the  quantity  and  quality  of  one's 
output  is  grievously  affected  when,  as  one  correspondent 
puts  it,  you  have  to  waste  time  playing  for  confidence  and 
guarding  against  being  "double-crossed,"  or  in  over- 
coming uncertainty  about  the  backing  of  boards  in  put- 
ting through  pieces  of  work  you  feel  to  be  vital.  A  cor- 
dial community  attitude,  on  the  other  hand,  "helps  a 
lot,"  "stimulates  for  better  work,"  "acts  as  a  spur,"  is 
one  of  the  most  important  elements,  say  those  who  have 
been  beneath  the  harrow. 

The  effect  of  one's  own  home  life  upon  his  work  is  such 
a  delicate  and  perhaps  poignant  question  that  it  is  almost 
hopeless  to  expect  much  information  from  a  question- 
naire. Yet  some  direct  statements  appear.  One  writer 
says  lack  of  sympathy  and  cooperation  at  home  cause 
most  of  the  downs  or  slumps.  Fortunately,  the  home 
life  of  the  average  social  worker  is  congenial,  therefore  is 
an  asset  rather  than  a  liability;  but  domestic  life  marked 
by  jealousy,  suspicion,  clash  of  temperament,  or  unbri- 
dled criticism  is  disastrous  to  the  worker,  whether  pro- 
bation officer,  C.  O.  S.  secretary,  or  railway  engineer. 


126         THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

I  have  left  till  this  point  the  effects  of  inadequate 
training.  One  is  astonished  at  first  at  the  lack  of  pro- 
fessional training  pretty  generally  reported;  but  the  won- 
der passes  when  we  realize  that  professional  schools  for 
social  work  are  a  development  of  the  last  decade.  One 
successful  man  says  that  when  he  was  urged  to  under- 
take a  certain  charity  job  he  demurred  because  he  knew 
nothing  about  such  work.  A  hopeful  sign,  said  the  ap- 
pointive power;  a  sign  that  you  are  willing  to  learn  and 
that  once  in  the  work  you  will  probably  stick  to  it.  This 
case  turned  out  well,  but  many  others  do  not.  At  least 
twenty  per  cent  of  all  my  returns  bewail  being  handi- 
capped by  improper  education  and  training.  Some  re- 
gret the  lack  of  a  better  fundamental  education  before 
special  training.  This  is  quite  in  line  with  the  experience 
of  training  schools  for  social  workers  and  of  those  who 
have  the  oversight  of  the  workers  at  their  posts.  The 
majority  of  social  workers  enter  their  field  because  they 
like  it,  they  say.  But,  as  many  of  them  confess,  this  lik- 
ing, this  interest  in  people,  interest  in  health,  in  boys' 
clubs,  in  service,  in  humanity,  carmot  at  once  be  trans- 
lated into  real  ability  or  effective  service.  Hence  they 
must  blunder  along,  acquiring  methods  which  must  later 
be  unlearned,  practicing  upon  a  none  too  patient  public, 
and  only  reach  a  modicum  of  skill  after  months  or  years 
of  hard  experience.  Do  you  wonder,  then,  at  serious 
ups  and  downs?  It  is  largely  because  of  this  lack  of 
specific  training  before  entering  a  particular  field  that 
the  social  worker's  curve  follows  in  its  gyrations  the 
curve  of  the  student  of  telegraphy,  shorthand,  or  chem- 
istry. 

Can  you  wonder,  either,  that  social  workers  go  stale  or 
actually  break  down?  Social  work  is  a  dangerous  trade 
because  in  its  very  essence  it  is  dealing  with  social  and 
spiritual  maladjustment,  and  by  the  very  complexity  of 
those  maladjustments  taxes  our  every  resource  of  good 
temper,  faith,  sympathy,  and  nicety  of  judgment.    There 


THE  DEAD   CENTER  IN   SOCIAL  WORK  1 27 

is  little  relief  from  the  daily  pressure.  This  is  brought 
out  by  repeated  testimony  to  the  fact  that  too  much 
variety  rather  than  too  much  routine  tends  to  baffle  and 
wear  the  worker  down.  The  danger  signals  of  impend- 
ing breakdown  in  one's  spiritual  fitness  for  his  job  are 
impatience,  touchiness,  h3rpersensitiveness,  physical  pain, 
shortage  in  ideas,  lack  of  interest  or  joy  in  the  work,  and 
abnormal  flashes  of  bad  temper.  The  effects  are  easily 
recognizable:  inability  to  think  quickly  or  clearly, ''  think- 
ing incoherently  and  skipping  from  one  job  to  another," 
feeling  that  one  is  "cumbered  with  much  serving  and 
spending  time  on  unimportant  things,"  superficiaUty,  try- 
ing to  find  the  easiest  way,  incapacity  for  prolonged  ef- 
fort, wasting  time  in  thinking  without  doing,  sense  of  un- 
certain grasp,  "disgust  with  the  job  and  a  desire  to 
change,"  loss  of  resourcefulness,  spontaneity  and  power 
to  inspire,  indecision,  hysteria,  and  temporary  crippling 
of  sound  judgment. 

IV 

This  whole  study  would  be  an  unprofitable  tale  if  it 
did  not  suggest  how  we  may  clamber  out  of  the  sloughs 
of  despond  and  scale  the  heights  beyond  our  present  plat- 
eaus. That  we  can  is  clear  from  experience.  Sometimes 
ups  seem  to  foUow  downs  almost  as  naturally  as  hills 
match  vales.  One  correspondent  shrewdly  explains  this 
as  coming  from  "a  sense  of  exhilaration  about  landing 
safe,  or  even  landing  at  all."  Reaction  through  sheer 
gratitude,  like  convalescence!  Another  proposes  harder 
work  as  the  cure  for  a  grouch,  but  wisely  adds  that  per- 
haps "taking  it  out  on  others"  is  what  he  really  has  in 
in  mind.  But  most  of  us  are  not  of  such  resilient  natures 
that  our  curves  of  energy  rise  merely  from  weathering 
hard  times.  The  uses  of  adversity  are  by  no  means  al- 
ways sweet;  frequently  they  deaden  and  brutalize. 
Hence  remedies  must  be  invoked  to  restore  our  mental 
and  spiritual  equilibrium.     A  good  night's  rest,  sleep, 


128         THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

food  and  exercise,  going  away  from  people  who  try  one's 
nerves,  cutting  off  outside  distractions,  retiring  from  the 
world,  getting  out  of  doors,  are  common  resources.  Pres- 
ident John  L.  Finley  has  long  followed  the  custom  of  say- 
ing to  faculties  and  students  at  vacation  partings,  "read 
a  new  book,  make  a  new  friend,  take  a  long  walk." 
Golden  advice;  there  is  no  better  tripod  upon  which  to 
base  your  personal  and  social  health. 

Good  books  are  like  alpenstocks  in  our  efforts  to 
climb.  Most  social  workers  cling  to  The  Survey  as  their 
chief  professional  guide,  supplemented  by  the  technical 
journals  covering  their  special  fields,  conference  reports, 
and  the  like.  For  general  reading  they  follow  the  stand- 
ard magazines,  with  considerable  emphasis  upon  the  At- 
lantic Monthly  and  New  Republic.  The  Ladies  Home 
Journal  is  read  by  at  least  one  worker,  "  to  keep  human." 
De  gustihus  non!  Dr.  Cabot,  Henderson,  Jane  Addams, 
Stevenson,  Emerson,  Kipling,  books  on  efficiency,  and 
detective  stories  share  honors  with  the  Bible.  Those  few 
cases  where  no  time  for  reading  was  reported  were  just 
the  cases  in  which  depression  seemed  most  deep-seated 
and  chronic. 

The  wisdom  of  vacations  with  pay  seems  beyond  ques- 
tion. The  gain  to  the  worker  redounds  to  his  organiza- 
tion. To  many  of  my  correspondents,  apparently,  the 
idea  of  a  sabbatical  seemed  so  new  that  they  were  at  sea. 
Some,  however,  announced  positively  that  a  year  out 
of  every  seven  or  eight,  spent  in  reeducation,  would  be 
enormously  profitable.  If  it  is  true,  as  one  veteran  sug- 
gests, that  in  every  new  decade  we  must  unlearn  the 
teachmgs  and  methods  of  the  precedmg  decade,  it  would 
be  the  part  of  wisdom  to  plan  for  such  periods  of  renewal 
and  reapprenticing  as  part  of  our  schemes  of  organized 
social  effort. 

My  final  point  has  to  do  with  special  sources  of  help. 
Conferences  are  pretty  generally  approved;  meetings 
with  fellow  social  workers,  likewise;  though  one  writer 


THE  DEAD  CENTER  IN  SOCIAL  WORK  1 29 

rather  snappishly  declared  that  social  workers  have  no 
new  ideas,  as  they  simply  repeat  what  they  have  read  in 
books.  The  backing  of  loyal  friends  is  a  universal  source 
of  strength.  Optimism  seems  to  be  a  desirable  asset  in 
such  friends.  Encouragement  by  superiors  and  good 
teamwork  with  one's  fellows  loom  large.  Sympathy 
of  domestic  mates  is  frequently  noted.  Meeting  with  re- 
sourceful individuals  and  strong  personalities  is  usually 
helpful;  but  one  writes,  "Strong  personalities  make  me 
tired."  Evidently  a  legitimate  protest  against  having  to 
coddle  or  placate  or  hobnob  with  some  notable  tyrant, 
some  bloodsucker,  some  personaUty  that  demands  in- 
stead of  giving  or  inspiring.  Some  curious,  abnormal  in- 
dividuals get  their  greatest  help  from  talking  shop,  from 
making  speeches — God  save  the  mark!  More  derive 
help  from  hearing  others  speak,  from  preachers  who 
think,  from  great  lecturers,  from  University  Extension 
courses.  Others  draw  courage  and  fire  from  the  biog- 
raphies of  the  great  veterans  in  social  work.  One  speaks 
of  the  value  of  self-communion  through  a  personal  diary. 
Another  of  growing  an  imagination.  Still  another  of  the 
stimulus  from  personal  ambition  for  leadership.  The 
magnitude  of  the  problem  stirs  up  some  strong  souls; 
one  writes:  "The  one  hundred  million  people  in  the 
United  States— folks— are  my  greatest  inspiration  and 
give  me  courage  for  the  future." 

The  desire  to  plumb  the  very  depths  of  things  may 
also  constitute  inspiration.  To  me,  writes  a  young  man, 
"the  most  inspiring  thing  is  that  there  is  a  wonderfully 
increasing  tendency  to  get  to  the  bottom  of  social  work 
and  put  it  on  a  systematic  and  businesslike  basis.  .  .  " 
The  assurance  of  doing  good  work  also  helps — "the  con- 
viction that  one  is  doing  real  work  and  being  paid  for  it," 
as  one  phrases  it.  Belief  in  humanity  and  confidence  in 
God's  love  illuminate  some  dark  hours.  Indeed  reli- 
gion very  commonly  appears  as  the  energizing  factor  in 
recuperation  or  progress.    A  large  proportion  of  social 


130         THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

workers  testify  to  this  fact.  Some  speak  specially  of  the 
benefits  of  Christian  Science;  others  of  prayer.  Some 
discriminate  carefully  between  their  religion  and  the 
church;  my  own  personal  religion,  not  my  church,  says 
one.  Another  observes:  "It  is  difficult  to  state  the  effect 
of  religion  at  this  time.  The  ordinary  church  depresses 
me  and  I  have  come  to  feel  that  the  church  which  ought 
to  have  'being'  as  its  motto  has  the  commercial  idea  of 
'  acquiring '  very  much  in  the  forefront.  I  do  not  think 
that  social  workers  any  more  than  other  men  can  afford 
to  disregard  religion,  but  I  do  not  see  how  they  can  be  in- 
fluenced very  much  by  tradition  and  creed."  This  per- 
son's demand  for  a  less  other-worldly  type  of  rehgion  is 
echoed  by  another:  "Religion  should  be  playing  an  im- 
portant positive  part,  but  is  playing  only  a  negative  one, 
due  in  part  to  failure  to  find  any  organized  expression  of 
religion  which  seems  to  fill  the  need  within  one.  There  is, 
of  course,  the  belief  that  things  are  really  growing  better 
and  the  hope  that  one  may  have  a  share  in  making  this 
old  world  a  better  place  for  some  to  live  in."  Religion 
in  this  and  other  cases  would  seem  to  offer  the  emotional 
background  for  an  attempt  to  believe  in  the  possibility 
of  progress,  of  destmy  controlled  for  progressive  social 
amelioration. 

Several  general  hints  suggest  themselves  by  way  of 
summarizing  the  facts  in  this  study. 

Time  ought  to  be  definitely  allowed  in  a  worker's  sched- 
ule for  periodically  checking  up.  Disinterested  experts 
should  be  called  in  occasionally  as  auditors  are  in  busi- 
ness offices,  or  municipal  research  experts  in  public  af- 
fairs, or  as  the  Life  Extension  Institute  proposes  for  its 
members,  for  a  sympathetic  taking  stock  of  our  techni- 
cal and  spiritual  resources.  Teachers  of  methods  of  so- 
cial work  should  include  ways  of  self-testing  and  anal- 
ysis which  can  be  used  as  barometers  and  help  in 
forestalling  tragic  misfits.  No  social  worker  should  be 
considered  as  fitted  for  his  job  until  he  has  achieved  a  phil- 


THE  DEAD   CENTER  IN  SOCIAL  WORK  131 

osophy  of  life  which  will  work  in  time  of  strain  and  cri- 
sis. The  cause  of  social  reconstruction,  as  we  all  know, 
is  not  seldom  impeded  by  jangling  personalities.  Spir- 
itual dependents  and  defectives  may  be  found  in  offices  as 
well  as  in  tenement  houses.  Just  as  sound  industrial  life 
requires  provision  for  periodic  reeducation  of  its  workers 
if  they  are  to  keep  up  with  the  advance  of  mechanical 
and  business  technique,  so  professional  life,  and  above 
all  the  profession  of  social  work,  must  provide  for  peri- 
odical "  retreats  "  for  the  refreshing  of  its  workers.  Scien- 
tific social  work  cannot  be  satisfied  with  a  few  months 
of  initial  professional  training  if  it  would  avoid  com- 
munity or  personal  ruts  and  dead-centering.  The  spirit 
of  science  demands  that  the  worker  shall  not  only  add 
constantly  to  his  own  equipment  but  that  he  shall 
share  with  his  fellows  for  the  enlargement  of  the  whole. 
Only  by  prodigality  in  providing  for  and  encouraging  the 
ceaseless  upbuilding  of  its  social  workers  in  health,  cul- 
ture, and  mental  poise  can  a  community  secure  that 
economy  of  effort  which  will  make  sure  that  if  we  must 
have  plateaus  of  staleness  and  valleys  of  humiliation,  at 
least  they  will  recur  less  often  and  at  a  constantly  higher 
and  higher  level. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE   LABOR  TURNOVER  IN  SOCIAL  AGENCIES 

The  scientific  spirit,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the  true  de- 
terminant of  the  social  worker's  attitude  toward  his 
profession  and  his  clients.  It  offers,  moreover,  an  ap- 
proach to  the  problem  of  efficiency,  whether  from  the 
standpoint  of  a  welfare  organization  or  of  its  personnel. 
We  have  already  analyzed  some  of  the  factors  in  the 
individual's  going  stale;  and  we  hinted  broadly  at  some 
of  the  reasons  which  conspire  to  dead-center  an  organi- 
zation. It  remains  to  show  by  a  single  concrete  example 
how  the  methods  of  science  may  perhaps  aid  in  stabiliz- 
ing the  administration  of  social  work. 

One  of  the  most  annoying  and  persistent  problems 
common  to  both  industry  and  social  work  is  the  constant 
shifting  of  the  staff.  Mr.  Carnegie  once  said  that  if  his 
plant  burned  down  it  could  be  rebuilt  without  delay  and 
with  no  appreciable  loss;  but  if  his  organization  were 
disrupted  his  whole  business  of  producing  steel  would  be 
crippled  if  not  utterly  destroyed.  This  is  the  nightmare 
of  the  "general  strike"  or  of  any  local  strike  or  lockout. 
Employers  have  sensed  this  clearly  enough  for  a  century 
and  took  precautions  early  against  such  crises  by  at- 
tempting to  have  them  branded  as  conspiracies  and  by 
enlisting  police  and  military  forces  to  prevent  or  suppress 
them.  But  they  were  much  slower  to  recognize  the  losses 
entailed  by  the  anarchy  of  attrition;  that  is,  by  the  cease- 
less round  of  hiring  and  firing.  This  they  not  only  con- 
sidered inevitable,  but  even  aided  and  abetted  by  hold- 
ing desperately  to  the  unlimited  right  to  discharge  and 
by  conniving  to  maintain  a  reserve  pool  of  surplus  labor. 

132 


THE   LABOR  TURNOVER  IN   SOCIAL  AGENCIES       133 

Even  "scientific  management"  itself  was  brought  rather 
belatedly  to  recognize  the  wastage  involved  in  such 
incessant  shifting  in  the  personnel  of  production.  Time 
studies  and  the  elimination  of  needless  motions  were 
right  enough  so  far  as  they  went,  but  they  could  not 
stop  the  leakage  incurred  by  having  to  teach  a  new  gang 
every  morning  the  lessons  which  the  gang  the  day  before 
had  barely  learned. 

But  within  the  past  five  years  two  new  ideas  have 
crept  into  scientific  management.  First,  the  perception 
that  a  worker  is  something  more  than  a  nameless  wheel 
in  the  organization  of  an  industrial  plant;  that  industry 
cannot  be  separated  from  other  social  concerns;  that 
employees  have  homes  and  other  interests  besides  the 
interest  in  a  particular  job.  Second,  the  idea  of  the 
employment  manager,  who  will  unite  psychology,  social 
vision,  business  acumen,  and  common  sense  in  the  at- 
tempt to  apply  science  to  the  process  of  filling  jobs. 
Already  employment  management  has  acquired  almost 
the  dignity  of  a  profession;  certainly  it  is  to  be  recognized 
as  a  skilled  vocation,  and  will  continue  to  be  necessary  in 
some  form  or  other,  no  matter  how  far  the  present  tide 
of  affairs  sweeps  us  away  in  the  direction  of  a  democratic 
or  even  socialistic  organization  of  industry 

But  these  employment  managers  working  individually 
and  through  their  conferences  have  done  much  more  than 
serve  their  employers  by  adding  to  his  profits  or  the 
workers  by  stabilizing  their  earnings.  They  have  ren- 
dered a  distinct  service  to  both  theoretical  and  applied 
social  science  by  demonstrating  in  concrete  figures  the 
losses  through  misplacement,  casual  displacement,  and 
no  less  casual  replacement  of  men  in  jobs.  Mr.  M.  W. 
Alexander  of  the  General  Electric  Company  made  one 
of  the  pioneer  studies  of  this  problem.  He  covered,  for 
the  year  19 12,  the  hiring  and  firing  of  twelve  factories 
employing  an  average  of  40,622  men  and  women.  To 
maintain  this  average,  "42,571  persons  were  engaged 


134         THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

during  the  year,  whereas  the  engagement  of  only  20,540 
could  be  defended  on  even  liberal  grounds.  Therefore 
22,031  persons  were  hired  above  the  apparently  necessary 
requirements."  Now  what  did  this  cost?  By  a  detailed 
analysis  he  figured  that  the  average  cost  of  hiring  and 
firing  was  $53.92  for  each  new  employee  and  $16  for 
each  rehired  employee — a  total  of  nearly  one  million 
dollars.  The  pay  roll  of  these  twelve  factories  totaled 
some  $29,000,000;  nearly  33^  per  cent  therefore  of  this 
amount  represented  faulty  employment  methods.  More- 
over if  the  experience  of  these  twelve  concerns  were  a 
fair  statistical  sample  of  the  state  of  manufacturing 
industries  the  country  over  the  annual  national  losses 
would  run  up  to  the  amazing  figure  of  $172,000,000  based 
on  the  number  of  employees,  $187,000,000  based  on 
capitalization,  and  $248,000,000  based  on  total  sales. 
And  these  figures  cover  only  such  items  of  cost  to  the 
employer  as  instruction,  wear  and  tear,  spoiled  work, 
reduction  in  output,  and  accidents.  They  tell  nothing 
of  the  still  greater  losses  to  the  employees  themselves. 

But  are  these  figures  typical?  In  the  old  days  before 
the  Ford  Motor  Company  introduced  scientific  em- 
ployment methods  its  experience  was  even  worse.  From 
October,  19 12,  to  October,  19 13,  it  hired  54,000  men 
to  keep  up  an  average  force  of  13,000 — a  400  per  cent 
turnover.  Other  concerns  report  a  turnover  of  from  1 25 
to  240  per  cent.  An  analysis  of  fifty-seven  Detroit  plants 
revealed  an  average  turnover  of  252  per  cent  in  19 16. 
On  the  Great  Lakes  the  Lake  Carriers '  Association  found 
in  19 13  that  when  the  normal  number  required  to  man 
completely  their  fleet  was  10,476  they  actually  hired 
52,094,  a  turnover  of  about  400  per  cent.  Three  years 
later  this  figure  had  jumped  to  more  than  500  per  cent. 
I  am  unable  to  find  anybody  who  can  tell  me  what 
should  be  considered  a  normal  turnover,  but  some  em- 
ployment managers  talk  as  if  zero  were  the  normal  ob- 
jective to  be  attained. 


THE   LABOR  TURNOVER  IN   SOCIAL  AGENCIES       135 

What  is  the  bearmg  of  all  this  upon  social  work? 
Without  attempting  to  assimilate  too  closely  the  experi- 
ences, methods,  and  standards  of  modern  business  to 
those  of  organized  social  work,  it  looked  Uke  a  fertile 
field  of  inquiry  to  attempt  a  study  of  how  staff  turnover 
affects  social  agencies.  In  making  it  there  were  no  blazed 
trails  to  follow,  save  the  few  hints  from  the  field  of  in- 
dustry. A  detailed  questionnaire  prepared  with  great 
care  and  submitted  to  the  executives  of  various  social 
agencies  (including  the  American  Association  for  Organ- 
izing Charity)  was  sent  to  all  of  the  large  and  one  hundred 
and  forty  of  the  smaller  relief  societies  in  the  United 
States  and  Canada.  All  but  three  of  the  larger  and 
seventy-two  of  the  smaller  societies  returned  replies 
usable  in  whole  or  in  part.  Only  thirteen  of  the  forty-two 
children's  agencies  responded;  and  of  this  number  so 
few  were  in  manageable  form  that  their  effect  upon  the 
whole  study  was  found  to  be  slight.  A  still  smaller  num- 
ber of  settlements  responded;  hence  their  experience  is 
quite  negligible  for  the  conclusions  as  a  whole. 

Of  all  the  cities  responding  thirty-nine  reported  the 
size  of  their  staff  and  the  turnover  for  the  five  years 
ending  in  the  spring  of  19 17  in  such  shape  that  compar- 
isons could  be  made.  The  percentage  of  turnover  for 
the  seventeen  cities  with  a  staff  of  ten  persons  (exclusive 
of  purely  clerical  workers)  or  over  ranged  from  47  to 
292,  with  an  average  for  the  whole  group  of  144.  (Table 
I.)  The  only  serious  omissions  from  this  group  are 
Chicago,  St.  Louis,  and  San  Francisco,  but  there  is  no 
reason  to  believe  that  their  experience  differs  sufficiently 
from  the  seventeen  other  large  cities  to  change  their 
average  materially.  ^ 

*  As  this  volume  was  going  through  the  press,  the  United  Chari- 
ties of  Chicago  reported  the  turnover  for  its  field  workers  (super- 
intendents, assistant  superintendents,  visitors,  visiting  house- 
keepers, stenographers,  clerks  and  directors  of  volunteers)  as  53.3 
per  cent  for  1916-17;  68.6  per  cent  for  1917-18;  and  43  per  cent 
for  the  first  nine  months  of  1918-19. 


136         THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

TABLE   I 

TOTAL  TURNOVER   BY    CITIES— FIVE-YEAR   PERIOD 

I.  Seventeen  Cities  with  Staff  of  Ten  or  Over 

Total  Total  Per  cent 

City  Turnover  Staf  Turnover 

Atlanta 17  10  17° 

Baltimore 45  33  136 

Boston 25  1  26  96 

Brooklyn 113  loS  i°8 

Buffalo 30  20  150 

Chicago- Jewish  Aid 28  18  156 

Cincinnati 20  27  74 

Cleveland 57  49  116 

Columbus 27  13  208 

Detroit 37  23  161 

Milwaukee 11  14  79 

Minneapolis 52  25  208 

Montreal 7  ^5  47 

New  York 146  50  292 

Philadelphia 58  44  132 

Pittsburgh 252  22  2  114 

Washington 3°  12  250 

Totals 728  506  144 

Similar  returns  from  twelve  smaller  cities  with  relief 
agencies  having  a  staff  of  less  than  ten  persons  re- 
vealed a  more  striking  range  of  turnover.  From  a 
minimum  of  25  per  cent  the  figures  soared  to  300  per 
cent,  with  an  average  of  98  per  cent  for  the  whole 
group.    (Table  II.) 

1  Boston  gives  no  figures  for  changes  in  group  employed  less  than 
two  years. 

2  Estimated. 


THE   LABOR  TURNOVER   IN   SOCIAL  AGENCIES       I37 

TABLE  II 

TURNOVER  IN 

Twelve  Cities  with  Staff  of  Less  than  Ten 

City                        Total  Total  Percent 

Turnover  Staff  Turnover 

Cambridge 2  5  40 

DaUas 8  9  89 

Des  Moines 5  5  100 

Erie 6  5  120 

Oakland 4  6  67 

Peoria 7  4  ^75 

Providence 9  7  ^^9 

Reading 4  4  100 

Savannah 12  4  300 

Springfield  (Mass.) i  4  25 

Wheeling 2  7  28 

Youngstown 7  8  87 

Totals 67  68  98 

Several  interesting  facts  cropped  out  in  the  process  of 
analyzing  these  returns.  In  the  first  place  some  agencies 
had  never  thought  of  keeping  such  a  check  upon  the  vicis- 
situdes of  their  staff.  One  executive  wrote  that  if  we 
could  renew  the  request  for  figures  five  years  hence  he 
would  have  them,  since  the  very  mquiry  had  challenged 
him  to  more  careful  observation.  Several  others  made 
copies  of  their  returns  for  their  own  guidance  as  a  sort  of 
balance  sheet.  In  certain  agencies  the  turnover  had  been 
so  rapid  among  the  higher  executives  that  nobody  had 
the  facts  from  personal  experience  for  even  two  years 
back,  to  say  nothing  of  a  five-year  period.  In  one  or  two 
cases  of  smaller  New  England  relief  societies  there  had 
been  no  change  of  staff  in  from  ten  to  twenty-five  years ! 

Speaking  by  and  large,  upon  the  basis  of  these  figures, 


138         THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

the  turnover  in  some  social  agencies  is  much  lower,  in 
others  rather  higher  than  the  experience  of  certain  indus- 
trial plants.  But  on  the  whole  the  advantage  is  dis- 
tinctly with  the  social  agencies,  particularly  if,  in  making 
the  comparison,  we  remember  that  our  returns  are  for  a 
five-year  period,  while  the  figures  from  industry  represent 
the  annual  rate.  This  is  what  might  have  been  expected, 
since  we  are  dealing  with  a  semiprofessional  class  at 
least,  by  contrast  with  a  very  large  percentage  of  un- 
skilled or  only  partially  skilled  labor  in  the  industries 
quoted. 

Most  of  the  agencies  reporting  did  not  pretend  to  know 
definitely  what  the  proper  or  normal  percentage  of  turn- 
over should  be;  they  had  no  exact  figures  nor  any  con- 
vincing experience  to  base  a  judgment  upon.  Twenty- 
five,  however,  hazarded  answers  more  or  less  tentatively. 
They  begin  with  one  whose  guess  is  a  counsel  of  perfec- 
tion: there  should  be  no  turnover!  The  rest  shade  off  in 
the  direction  of  actualities.  Fifteen  say  10  to  20  per  cent 
is  a  proper  annual  turnover;  four  say  25;  the  remainder 
from  30  to  40. 

Since  the  bare  figures  of  total  turnover  tell  us  nothing 
of  how  differences  in  professional  rank  or  attainment  af- 
fect tenure  of  office  and  stability  of  staff,  the  next  step 
in  our  problem  is  to  analyze  the  total  five-year  turnover 
by  ranks  and  by  years  of  service.  The  reports  of  twenty- 
seven  cities  with  770  workers  are  available  for  this  com- 
parison. (Table  III.)  It  required  some  interpretation 
of  staff  titles  to  reduce  the  various  returns  to  some  com- 
mon denomination.  For  example,  it  was  necessary  to 
make  a  separate  pigeonhole  entitled  "special  secretary  " 
to  take  care  of  such  diversities  as  French  secretary, 
church  secretary,  anti-tuberculosis  secretary.  But  on 
the  whole  the  reports  from  these  twenty-seven  cities 
were  in  such  shape  as  to  be  readily  comparable,  thanks 
to  a  fair  standardization  of  office  organization. 

Even  a  superficial  glance  at  Table  III  shows  at  least 


THE   LABOR  TURNOVER  IN   SOCIAL  AGENCIES       139 

two  critical  points  which  substantiate  generally  ac- 
cepted experience.  First,  the  greatest  turnover  (both 
absolute  and  relative)  is  in  the  group  of  visitors  or  dis- 
trict agents — that  is,  among  the  newer  recruits;  and  this 
shift  is  in  inverse  ratio  to  length  of  service.  Second,  the 
next  greatest  ratio  of  change  occurred  among  district 
secretaries,  but  with  the  time  element  transposed,  for  the 
largest  percentage  of  turnover  was  among  those  of  long- 
est service.  The  immediate  presumption  is  of  course  that 
they  were  largely  promotions  to  higher  executive  posi- 
tions. But  for  many  reasons  the  most  significant  feature 
of  this  whole  table  is  the  distribution  of  percentages  in  the 
totals.  Nearly  half  the  changes  occurred  within  less  than  a 
year  after  employment!  Two-thirds  within  two  years ;  and 
three-quarters  within  three  years.  As  we  shall  discover 
later  many  of  these  changes  are  due  to  maladjustments 
of  various  sorts — lack  of  training,  general  unfitness, 
domestic  dif&culties,  and  the  like. 


I40         THE   SCIENTIPIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 


TABLE  III 

TURNOVER  BY  RANKS  AND  YEARS  OF  SERVICE 

Reports  of  Twenty-seven  Cities 

Less 

Rank                  5  yrs.    4-5    3-4    2-3    1-2    than  Totals 
or  more    yrs.    yrs.    yrs.    yrs.    i  yr. 

Gen.  Secy,  or  Supt. . .        6           3        4        6        2        3  24 
Asst.    Secy,    or    Asst. 

Supt 6           3        2         2         2        2  17 

Dist.  Secretary 29          13       22       21       11        3  99 

Case  Supervisor i            i         3         3         i  9 

Financial  Secretary. .. .     i                     i         2        4        2  10 

Asst.  Dist.  Secretary..  .     2            i         4       11       13         5  36 

Employment  Secretary .     i  i 

Registrar 3         2         i  6 

Visitor  or  Dist.  Agt 14          15       17       55     nS     271  490 

Visitor  Assistant 5        6  1 1 

Nurse 3           4        2        i        4      i5  29 

Visiting  Housekeeper .  .                  214                 3  10 

Confidential  Exchange .                                              i  i 

Visitor  in  Training 19  ^9 

Special  Secretary i                     121  5 

Reception  Clerk 2                     i  3 

Totals 66         42      61     109    163    329  770 

Percentage     of     Total 

Turnover 8.5        5.5     8.0  14. i  21 .2  42.7  100. o 

The  complement  to  this  set  of  figures  appears  in  the  re- 
turns from  twenty-six  cities  on  the  length  of  service  of 
various  ranks  of  present  members  of  the  staff.  (Table  IV.) 


THE   LABOR  TURNOVER  IN   SOCIAL  AGENCIES       141 


TABLE  IV 

LENGTH  OF  SERVICE  BY  RANKS 

Reports  of  Twenty-six  Cities 

Less 

Rank               5  yrs.  4-5    3-4  2-3  1-2  than  Totals 

or  more    yrs.    yrs.  yrs.  yrs.  i  yr. 

Gen.  Secy,  or  Supt 14  11  4  i  21 

Asst.    Secy,    or    Asst. 

Supt 12  3        I  2  5  I  24 

Dist.  Secretary 34  11       16  14  13  7  95 

Case  Supervisor 5  4        3  3  i  i  17 

Financial  Secretary. ...  13  i  5 

Asst.  Dist.  Secretary. . .     2  5  5  8  3  23 

Emplojonent  Secretary.  i  i 

Registrar 5  i  3  2  2  13 

Visitor  or  Dist.  Agt 14  11       21  36  58  65  205 

Visitor  Assistant 3  4  7 

Nurse 7  4        5  6  7  32  61 

Visiting  Housekeeper . .  4  2  2  7  15 

Visitor  in  Training.  ...  13  13 

Special  Secretary 5  i  i  4  11 

Reception  Clerk i  12  4 

Totals 99         35      60      75    104    142      515 

Here  again  the  critical  points  are  the  district  secre- 
taries and  the  visitors,  and  as  before  with  the  time  ratios 
reversed.  For  while  nearly  half  the  district  secretaries 
have  served  four  years  or  more,  and  two-thirds  more  than 
three  years,  one-third  of  the  visitors  have  been  on  the 
staff  less  than  a  year,  over  sixty  per  cent  less  than  two 
years,  and  four-fifths  less  than  three  years.  This  appears 
much  more  clearly  in  Table  V  and  in  the  graph  based 
upon  it.  The  rapid  descent  of  the  solid  line  indicates 
the  relative  stability  of  the  higher  ranks  on  the  staff, 
while  the  giddy  soaring  of  the  dotted  line  tells  a  mute 
story  of  constantly  "breaking  in"  new  and  inexperi- 
enced workers. 


142         THE  SCIENTEFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 


TABLE   V 

ABRIDGED  TABLE  SUMMARIZING  TABLE  IV 

Total  of  Jour  Total  of  re- 
Length  of  service              highest  ranks  tnaining  ranks 

5  years  or  over 65  34 

4-5  years 19  16 

3-4  years 21  39 

2-3  years 19  56 

1-2  years 23  81 

Less  than  i  year 10  132 

Totals 157  358 


GRAPH  ILLUSTRATING  TABLE  V 
B"yrs.+           4-6  yrs.          3-4  yrs.           2-3  yrs.           1-2  yrs. 

Less  than  1 

1 

IJO 

Solid  lin 
Distr.  Secj 

e  includes  G< 
.,  Case  Supe 

n.  Secy.,  Asi 
rvisor. 

it.  Secy,, 

1 
1 
1 
j 

Dotted  I 
other  Subo 

ne  includes 
rdinate  Posit 

Visitors,  Nur 
ions. 

ses,  and  the 

1 

1 
1 

1 
1 

I 

iOU 

1 

1 
1 
1 

90 

1 
1 

1 

80 
70 

/ 
/ 

/ 

/ 
/ 

\ 

y 

/ 
f 

SO 
40 

\ 

\ 

/ 
/ 

/ 

30 

\\ 

/ 
/ 

/              - 

^ 

S^ 

20 

X^ 

/ 

\ 

10 

A 

THE   LABOR  TURNOVER  IN   SOCIAL  AGENCIES       143 

The  attempt  to  work  out  some  valid  idea  of  the  aver- 
age length  of  service  proved  unsuccessful  for  several  rea- 
sons, but  principally  through  the  fact  that  most  of  the 
smaller  societies  were  unable  to  compute  any  average 
which  would  mean  anything.  It  is  true  that  thirty-two 
agencies  did  venture  to  suggest  an  average,  which  in  two- 
thirds  of  the  cases  ranged  between  two  and  four  years. 
Only  two  ran  over  four  years.  The  period  of  service 
showed  such  wide  ranges — from  a  few  days  to  as  high  as 
ten,  twenty-five,  and  even  thirty-nine  years — that  any 
attempt  to  scramble  such  figures  and  call  it  an  average 
would  have  been  merely  ludicrous.  It  is  significant  that 
a  good  many  executives  who  filled  out  the  returns  had 
been  on  the  job  such  a  short  time  that  they  could  not 
give  the  ancient  history  of  their  organizations.  One  man 
wrote  that  he  was  the  third  secretary  in  three  years. 
Again,  other  agencies  were  too  young  to  have  any  signif- 
icant figures  yet.  On  the  other  hand,  some  cities  like 
Worcester,  Massachusetts,  change  their  social  agencies 
very  slowly.  The  first  secretary  of  the  Associated  Chari- 
ties there  stayed  four  years.  Her  successor  is  still  at 
work  after  twenty-two  years  of  service.  She  writes  that 
''all  the  social  workers  in  Worcester,  public  and  private, 
stay!' '  By  contrast  one  Eastern  executive  cleaves  to  the 
opinion  that  "five  years  seems  a  fair  period  of  service. 
In  exceptional  cases  only  should  long  periods  of  service 
be  desirable."  Here,  of  course,  we  run  into  a  stone  wall, 
and  can  only  adjourn  scientific  hope  until  some  sure 
method  is  worked  out  for  diagnosing  dead  center  in  a 
social  agency.  Such  a  diagnosis  will  tell  us  how  long  one 
should  stay  with  a  social  agency  before  wearing  out  his 
welcome. 

An  attempt  was  made  to  discover  whether  there  is  any 
difference  in  the  proportion  of  turnover  in  public  as  com- 
pared with  private  agencies.  The  general  burden  of  opin- 
ion inclines  toward  the  idea  that  there  is  no  difference. 
However,  a  considerable  number  of  comments  indicate  a 


144         THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

belief  that  there  are  relatively  more  changes  in  private 
agencies  than  in  public.  Likewise,  concerning  the  en- 
dowed as  compared  with  the  unendowed  agency,  what 
few  clear  opinions  were  secured  tended  toward  the  gen- 
eral conclusion  that  the  endowed  agencies  are  the  more 
stable.  It  is  curious  to  find  that  in  a  good  many  in- 
stances the  same  reason  is  given  why  endowed  and  pub- 
lic agencies  are  more  stable.  The  reason  is  not  flattering, 
since  it  is  usually  a  suggestion  that  these  agencies  are 
more  wooden,  antiquated,  routineer,  and  involved  in  pol- 
itics. The  evidence  here  is  so  conflicting  as  to  be  ui  no 
sense  authoritative.  It  simply  reveals  curious  little  prej- 
udices and  echoes  of  unpleasant  local  situations. 

The  question  of  periodicity  forms  another  interesting 
angle  of  approach  to  the  whole  problem.  Is  there  an 
open  and  a  closed  season  for  social  workers?  Is  social 
work  a  seasonal  industry?  Out  of  thirty  agencies  report- 
ing their  experience  seventeen  found  their  changes  in 
staff  rather  uniform  throughout  the  year;  thirteen  re- 
ported seasonal  or  periodic  shifts.  Some  misunderstood 
the  question  and  found  neither  uniform  nor  seasonal 
changes!  And  many  had  no  reliable  data  or  were  too 
small  or  too  young  to  judge.  Several  of  the  larger  agen- 
cies reported  most  changes  between  spring  and  the  end 
of  the  summer.  This  is  probably,  as  New  York's  ex- 
perience suggests,  because  of  the  easing  down  of  the 
winter  rush.  The  New  York  Charity  Organization 
Society  employed  57  per  cent  of  its  one-year  workers 
during  the  four  winter  months. 

In  attempting  to  come  at  closer  grips  with  the  reasons 
for  turnover,  two  classes  were  set  up;  namely,  voluntary 
changes  and  dismissals  for  cause.  We  have  the  expe- 
rience of  twenty-nine  cities  involving  603  workers  as  a 
basis  for  analyzing  the  reasons  for  voluntary  changes. 
(Table  VI.)  One  out  of  every  eight  went  because  of 
death  or  old  age  or  physical  disability.  About  the  same 
proportion  married.    Nearly  forty  per  cent  resigned  to 


THE   LABOR  TURNOVER  IN   SOCIAL  AGENCIES       145 
TABLE   VI 
REASONS  FOR  VOLUNTARY  CHANGES 
Experience  of  Twenty-nine  Cities  * 

Reasons  Number  oj  Cases 

Died • 10 

Retired  because  of  age  or  disability 51 

Resigned  to  marry 87 

Resigned  to  enter  social  work  that  paid  better 163 

Resigned  to  enter  social  work  that  gave  higher  rank.. .  .  61 

Resigned  to  enter  social  work  that  offered  promotion. .  .  18 

Resigned  to  enter  social  work  for  which  better  fitted ...  42 

Left  social  work  to  enter  other  pursuits 51 

Resigned  on  account  of  ill  health 24 

Resigned  because  work  depressing i 

Resigned  because  work  "too  hard" 7 

Sought  "more  congenial  work" 3 

Sought  more  training 14 

Resigned  for  various  family  complications 21 

Moved 3 

EnUsted 3 

Entered  Red  Cross i 

Other  miscellaneous  reasons 36 

No  special  reason 7 

Total 603 

take  positions  offering  more  attractive  salary,  higher 
rank,  or  better  chances  for  promotion.  The  most  signif- 
icant item  is,  however,  the  hint  of  maladjustment.  If 
we  may  interpret  leaving  social  work  to  enter  other 
pursuits  as  a  question  of  lack  of  fitness  for  social  work, 
and  add  these  cases  to  those  where  unfitness  is  frankly 
confessed,  we  roll  up  a  total  of  fifteen  per  cent  of  misfits. 
Not  all  are  misfits,  however.    One  very  poignant  letter 

*  Includes  returns  from  some  agencies  whose  figures  were  in- 
conclusive for  Tables  III  and  IV. 


146         THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

explaining  why  the  questionnaire  had  not  been  ac- 
knowledged earlier  stated  that  the  writer  had  broken 
down  from  overwork  and  closed  as  follows:  "The  study 
you  will  make  from  data  collected  will  be  most  interest- 
ing. It  is  a  forward  step  which  I  indorse.  I  really  am 
alive  to  the  vital  issues  of  the  day  along  every  branch  of 
sociological  endeavor,  but  it  is  against  human  nature 
for  me  to  have  to  do  two  people's  work  all  the  time  and 
three  parts  of  the  time  at  the  heaviest  season  of  each 
year.  Am  seriously  considering  giving  up  social  work  and 
seeking  some  other  means  of  livelihood."  At  this  point 
the  question  of  vocational  guidance,  or  misguidance, 
emerges;  and  the  emphasis  is  heightened  if  we  add  to  the 
number  of  misfits  those  who  for  various  reasons  left  to 
secure  more  training.  Domestic  complications,  such  as 
objection  of  parents  or  sickness  in  the  family,  accounted 
for  a  good  many  changes.  Finally  into  the  pigeonhole 
"miscellaneous  reasons"  are  stowed  away  such  causes 
as  travel,  prolonged  holiday,  "retired  to  a  ranch," 
"released  to  another  organization  which  needed  worker 
more"  (camouflage  or  the  millennium?)  "need  change 
of  altitude,"  left  to  become  a  nun,  or  foreign  missionary, 
or  study  for  the  ministry.  This  is  by  no  means  an  un- 
wholesome or  dispiriting  story.  The  desire  for  advance- 
ment is  perfectly  healthy  and  should  be  encouraged  and 
met  so  far  as  the  resources  of  an  organization  are  con- 
cerned. Loyalty  to  the  organization  or  to  its  chief 
should  never  be  shouted  so  loud  that  the  voice  breaks, 
especially  if  the  shouting  is  unaccompanied  by  some  more 
substantial  argument.  The  fifteen  to  twenty  per  cent  of 
misfits,  to  a  greater  or  less  degree,  remain  a  stumbling- 
block  which  will  be  in  part  explained  later  after  exam- 
ining the  reasons  for  dismissals  from  the  staff. 


THE   LABOR  TURNOVER  IN  SOCIAL  AGENCIES       147 


TABLE  VII 

LENGTH  OF  SERVICE  OF  PERSONS  DISMISSED  FOR 

CAUSE 

Experience  of  Twenty-five  Cities 


Less 

Period  Served  5  yrs. 

4-5 

3-4 

2-3 

1-2    than    Not 

Total 

or  more 

yrs. 

yrs. 

yrs. 

yrs.   I  yr.  stated 

No.  of  Persons     13 

4 

4 

IS 

45     ISO       17 

248 

TABLE  VIII 

REASON  FOR  DISMISSAL 

Experience  of  Twenty-five  Cities 

Reason  No.  of  Cases 

Reorganization  of  agency 11 

Special  job  finished 17 

Term  expired 71 

Financial  incapacity 4 

General  incapacity 61 

Lack  of  proper  training 22 

Immorality  proved  or  suspected 4 

Inability  to  do  teamwork 24 

Insubordination 5 

Disloyalty  (to  agency) 4 

Tactlessness 8 

Indiscretion 6 

Unfitted  by  ill  health i 

Dishonesty i 

*  Unpromising  material " 7 

"Slackers,"  capable  but  lacking  in  interest 2 

Total 248 


T48         THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

The  best  approach  to  the  figures  of  dismissals  for 
cause  is  perhaps  through  an  analysis  of  the  length  of 
service  in  such  cases.  Here  we  have  the  experience  of 
twenty-five  cities  involving  248  cases.  Table  VII  shows 
that  eighty  per  cent  of  them  had  been  on  the  staff  less 
than  two  years.  The  immediate  presumption  is  that 
most  of  these  were  seasonal  "fill-ins"  or  inexperienced 
workers  who  soon  proved  to  be  misfits.  .  This  presump- 
tion is  pretty  well  justified  by  the  analysis  of  the  specific 
reasons  for  dismissal  (Table  VIII.)  One  out  of  every  six 
apparently  was  discharged  automatically  after  finishing  a 
predetermined  period  or  job.  Recall  that  many  agencies 
add  extra  workers  for  the  winter  rush  and  drop  them  in 
the  late  spring.  Staff  reorganization  was  responsible 
for  a  few  changes,  but  it  is  an  open  secret  that  reorgani- 
zation is  frequently  a  means  of  getting  rid  of  deadwood 
when  no  other  method  avails.  Far  more  serious  than 
either  of  these  is  the  factor  of  incapacity  or  maladjust- 
ment, however  denominated.  Considerably  over  half 
of  all  the  cases  come  under  this  heading.  Not  all  such 
cases  are  chargeable  to  unwise  vocational  steering  or 
bad  judgment  on  the  part  of  executives;  but  either  those 
executives  or  the  agencies  responsible  for  training  the 
misfits,  or  both,  should  see  to  it  that  the  figures  of  ten 
per  cent  for  improper  training  and  another  ten  per  cent 
for  inability  to  do  teamwork  are  materially  reduced. 

Just  how  this  responsibihty  for  poor  judgment  is  to  be 
divided  may  appear  by  inquiring  who  hires  and  what 
methods  of  recruiting  are  used.  Apparently  in  nearly 
all  the  smaller  societies  the  board  of  directors  hires  all  the 
staff.  In  the  larger  agencies  the  usual  procedure  is  for 
the  board  to  appoint  an  executive  secretary  who  selects 
the  rest  of  the  staff.  In  thirty  out  of  seventy-two  cases 
the  secretary,  superintendent,  or  other  chief  executive 
did  the  hiring.  In  twenty-six  cases  the  board  hired  all 
with  or  without  recommendation  by  the  executive.  In 
fifteen  others  the  executive  recruited  his  staff  with  ap- 


THE   LABOR  TURNOVER  IN   SOCIAL  AGENCIES       149 

proval  or  advice  of  the  board  or  a  special  board  com- 
mittee. In  a  few  cases  the  heads  of  departments  as- 
sumed this  responsibility. 

The  methods  of  recruiting  were  just  about  as  varied 
and  uncoordinated  as  those  of  the  munition  or  ship 
plants  in  the  early  days  of  the  war.  Some  agencies 
frankly  acknowledged  the  use  of  all  methods,  some  con- 
fessed no  fixed  method.  Twenty-three  depended  upon 
chance  applications.  Personal  search,  "scouting"  at 
conferences,  personal  acquaintance,  or  special  tips  from 
friends  netted  a  good  many.  Schools  of  Philanthropy 
were  credited  as  the  best  source  by  twenty-three  agen- 
cies; the  American  Association  for  Organizing  Charity 
came  next  with  nine;  the  Intercollegiate  Bureau  with 
eight;  college  placement  bureaus  and  university  contacts 
yielded  seven.  Advertising,  training  classes,  and  appli- 
cation waiting  Usts  brought  in  a  few  more.  Here  we 
encounter  one  of  the  weak  spots  in  organized  social  work. 
It  can  be  strengthened  in  at  least  two  ways:  by  standard- 
izing gradually  the  professional  education  of  social  work- 
ers, and  by  developing  sound  placement  bureaus  on  lines 
suggested  by  the  National  Social  Workers'  Exchange. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  many  changes,  particularly 
in  the  larger  well-established  relief  agencies,  result  from 
the  practice  of  beginners  using  them  as  training  schools 
or  stepping-stones.  Thirty-five  out  of  fifty-four  have  had 
this  experience.  This  number,  with  only  three  or  four 
exceptions,  includes  every  large  society.  Boston  answers, 
yes,  decidedly,  to  a  question  on  this  point:  "the  chief 
reason  for  the  many  changes  in  our  staff."  Minneapolis 
modestly  says  "yes  to  a  certain  extent — at  least  we  like 
to  believe  so!"  Pittsburgh  thinks  it  is  to  be  expected 
and  desired.  New  York  agrees  it  is  unavoidable,  but 
would  not  encourage  people  to  join  its  staff  with  that 
understanding,  except  as  volunteers.  Cleveland  finds 
it  less  true  now  than  in  the  past,  presumably  because  the 
community  has  developed   other  means  for   training. 


150        THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

Other  cities  hope  that  they  are  entering  a  period  when 
such  a  state  of  affairs  will  obtain.  A  side  light  on  the 
migration  of  social  workers  is  thrown  by  the  report  that 
the  workers  trained  by  some  of  the  smaller  agencies 
wander  off  to  the  big  cities,  while  such  a  city  as  Brooklyn 
finds  that  its  district  secretaries  leave  for  positions  of 
greater  responsibility  in  smaller  towns.  To  a  certain 
extent  this  tendency  is  offset  by  proper  increases  in 
salary. 

But  in  spite  of  the  general  recognition  that  better 
salaries  tend  to  stabilize  a  working  staff  a  good  many 
charitable  agencies  still  pay,  or  are  forced  by  circum- 
stances to  pay,  low  salaries  even  at  the  risk  of  losing 
their  workers  as  soon  as  they  become  really  efficient. 
The  experience  of  the  larger  agencies  is  about  equally 
divided  on  this  point.  Some  say  they  are  not  conscious 
of  any  such  reasoned  practice;  others  admit  it  as  an 
unfortunate  fact  in  the  past;  still  others  state  definitely 
that  this  has  been  the  regular  policy  of  their  boards.  It 
is  a  situation  closely  resembling  "sweating"  and  seems 
particularly  marked  in  a  large  majority  of  smaller  agen- 
cies. 

This  leads  to  the  whole  question  of  salary  schedules 
and  their  effect  upon  turnover.  In  general  we  may  say 
that  most  larger  agencies  have  some  sort  of  a  progressive 
salary  scheme  or  are  trying  to  develop  one.  By  con- 
trast most  of  the  smaller  societies  have  none  at  all  or 
else  their  progression  is  so  limited  as  to  be  ineffective. 
Various  modifications  of  the  method  crop  out.  One 
city  uses  a  progressive  scale  for  the  first  twenty  months 
of  service,  then  resorts  to  "promotion  on  merit."  An- 
other scales  up  to  a  maximum  of  $70,  but  promotes 
slowly  after  that.  Several  use  the  graduated  method 
for  the  apprenticeship  stage  of  visitors  in  training  only, 
and  apparently  use  the  method  of  higgling  in  the  market 
thereafter.  There  seems  to  be  no  doubt  that  other  things 
being  equal  where  such  a  recognized  possibility  of  salary 


THE  LABOR  TURNOVER  IN   SOCIAL  AGENCIES       151 

increases  is  in  practice  it  tends  to  hold  the  staff  together, 
at  least  for  from  two  to  five  years.  Here  and  there  some 
doubt  is  expressed  as  to  its  effect,  but  in  such  cases  the 
trouble  would  seem  to  lie  not  in  the  principle  of  progres- 
sion but  in  the  low  standard  of  salaries  in  general  which 
makes  it  difficult  to  meet  competition.  That  these  cases 
are  exceptional  may  be  inferred  from  the  mournful  plaint 
of  the  secretary  of  a  good-sized  Western  society  who 
deplores  the  breakdown  of  her  staff  because  her  directors 
do  not  see  the  need  for  such  a  method  since  business 
concerns  are  not  run  on  that  basis.  Another  exception 
proves  the  rule — and  more :  a  Middle-West  agency  reports 
that  its  workers  stay  on  in  spite  of  low  salaries.  Evi- 
dently the  good  old  days  of  piety,  renunciation,  chastity, 
and  good  works  are  not  utterly  swallowed  up  in  the  new 
salaried,  scientific  charity! 

The  question  finally  simmers  down  to  a  determination 
of  what  is  a  decent  living  wage  for  a  social  worker.  By 
what  standard  shall  it  be  measured?  It  seemed  to  be 
not  unreasonable  at  least  to  inquire  how  salaries  in  relief 
agencies  compared  with  those  prevailing  for  elementary 
or  high-school  teachers.  Out  of  sixty  agencies  replying 
to  this  question  twenty-two  claim  that  their  salaries 
compare  very  favorably  with  those  of  teachers;  eighteen 
find  them  less,  particularly  for  beginners;  five  consider 
them  fairly  comparable;  seven  are  on  a  par  with  elemen- 
tary but  not  high  schools.  A  few  details  will  clothe  these 
statistical  bones  with  flesh.  In  Boston  salaries  of  social 
workers  compare  more  favorably  with  those  of  teachers 
after  the  period  of  apprenticeship  is  over.  In  Pittsburgh, 
salaries  are  lower  at  first,  but  after  three  years  are  about 
equal  to  elementary-school  salaries.  In  Minneapolis 
they  are  apparently  bigger  at  first,  but  the  maximum  is 
lower  except  for  executive  positions.  In  Brooklyn,  Des 
Moines,  and  Sioux  City,  for  example,  they  are  consider- 
ably lower;  in  Cambridge,  10  to  15  per  cent  lower  except 
for  general  secretary.    Hamilton,  Ohio,  pays  the  general 


152         THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

secretary  less  than  a  high-school  teacher,  and  visitors  less 
than  elementary  teachers.  In  Dallas,  Texas,  visitors' 
salaries  compare  with  those  of  elementary  teachers,  but 
the  superintendent  or  general  secretary  is  comparable 
with  only  the  lowest  high-school  salary.  In  several 
cities  in  different  parts  of  the  country  the  executive 
secretary  ranks  about  equal  with  or  above  the  high- 
school  teacher;  but  the  visitors  seem  to  offset  this  gain 
by  running  considerably  lower  than  elementary  school 
teachers.  On  the  whole,  this  is  not  a  showing  distinctly 
flattering  to  social  work.  We  are  apparently  still  faced 
here  with  a  survival  of  mediasval  thought  which  confided 
so  large  a  part  of  charity  and  good  works  to  the  care  of 
unpaid  monastic  orders.  But  the  increased  demand  for 
social  workers  since  the  outbreak  of  the  war  is  already 
registering  its  benevolent  effect  in  a  rise  of  the  salary 
schedule.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  this  advantage  can 
be  carried  over  into  times  of  peace,  for  there  is  no  doubt 
that  it  would  have  a  marked  effect  upon  the  stabiHty  of 
social  organizations. 

It  is  a  matter  of  common  observation  in  the  business 
world  that  competition  for  workers  sometimes  degen- 
erates into  shameless  stealing  of  trusted  employees. 
The  question  of  whether  a  similar  situation  held  in  the 
field  of  social  work  was  put  to  the  various  agencies  con- 
cerned. In  the  vast  majority  of  cases  a  flat  "No"  came 
as  the  reply.  Only  a  very  few  cases  had  suffered  the  con- 
trary experience.  Some  of  the  executives  replying  to 
this  question  stated  that  sometimes  they  felt  personal 
resentment,  but  that  the  ethics  of  these  practices  had 
not  been  established  and  they  were  inclined  to  accept 
the  situation  philosphically.  Apparently,  deliberate 
piracy  of  this  sort  has  very  little  to  do  with  the  general 
average  of  turnover. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  one  of  the  results  of  rapid 
turnover  in  social  agencies  is  the  enforced  promotion 
of  unprepared  and  inexperienced  workers  to  positions  of 


THE   LABOR   TURNOVER  IN   SOCIAL  AGENCIES       1 53 

responsibility.  About  one-third  of  some  forty  agencies 
reporting  have  been  the  victim  of  such  necessity.  This 
is  particularly  true  of  the  larger  agencies.  Some  of  them 
say  frankly  that  they  have  to  do  it  altogether  too  fre- 
quently. For  example,  one  says  flatly  that  "Every 
promotion  the  last  two  and  one-half  years  has  been  too 
soon  for  the  work  or  the  worker.  One  resulted  disas- 
trously." Only  one  agency  reports  such  a  promotion  as  a 
brilliant  success  and  imphes  that  it  was  a  great  gamble. 
Most  of  the  societies  reporting  that  they  had  not  suffered 
in  this  way  belong  to  the  group  whose  staffs  are  so  small 
that  they  are  not  arranged  upon  a  hieratic  basis.  It  is 
quite  evident  that  one  great  source  of  trouble  is  the  fact 
that  workers  move  about  so  rapidly  that  they  do  not 
thoroughly  master  the  elementary  stages  of  their  jobs 
in  such  a  way  as  to  become  good  timber  for  promotion 
to  the  higher  ranks. 

The  question  arises  as  to  what  effect  the  training  or 
lack  of  training  of  social  workers  has  upon  their  mobility. 
An  effort  was  made,  therefore,  to  ascertain  what  t>'pe  of 
training  workers  actually  employed  by  relief  agencies  had. 
Table  DC  on  page  1 54  shows  the  percentages  of  the  staff 
of  seventy-two  relief  agencies  having  specialized  types 
of  training. 


154         THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

TABLE  IX 

Percentages  of  Staffs  of  72  Relief  Agencies  with  Specified 
Types  of  Training 


Seventeen 

Fifty-five 

Type  of  training 

larger 

smaller 

agencies 

agencies 

College 

46.5 

40.9 

Full  College 

43-1 

38.2 

Part  College  or  Normal 

2.8 

2.0 

Post  Graduate 

0.6 

0.7 

School  of  Philanthropy 

18.2 

24. 

Trained  by  Organization 

33-0 

43-3 

Nurse's  Training 

12.0 

7.0 

Special  Training  in  Russell  Sage 

Foundation,  Etc, 

4-5 

2.4 

No  Special  Training 

IS-2 

10. 0 

Ambiguous 

0.6 

6.0 

These  have  been  divided  into  the  larger  agencies  having 
a  staff  of  ten  or  over,  and  smaller  agencies  having  a  staff 
of  less  then  ten.  Nearly  half  of  the  workers  in  the  larger 
agencies  have  had  either  part  or  full  college  training,  and 
two-fifths  of  the  workers  in  the  smaller  agencies  were 
similarly  equipped.  Schools  of  Philanthropy  contributed 
a  slightly  larger  share  to  the  smaller  agencies.  The  lat- 
ter also  apparently  depended  more  upon  training  by  the 
organization  itself  than  did  the  larger  agencies.  It  is 
somewhat  surprising  to  find  that  a  larger  proportion  of 
the  big  agencies  utilize  people  without  any  special  train- 
ing. This  should  not  be  unduly  emphasized,  however, 
since  in  dealing  with  relatively  small  numbers  a  statis- 
tical exaggeration  of  a  slight  difference  could  easily  be 
made.  It  is  perfectly  apparent  from  some  of  these  fig- 
ures that  social  work  on  the  whole  is  entitled  to  the  claim 
of  professional  standards  since  at  least  two-thirds  of  all 
the  workers  employed  by  all  of  the  seventy-two  agen- 


THE   LABOR  TURNOVER  IN   SOCIAL  AGENCIES       1 55 

cies  had  either  academic  or  professional  training  with,  in 
some  cases,  specialized  training  in  addition.  In  this  con- 
nection it  is  worthy  of  note  that  a  good  many  of  the  agen- 
cies believe  that  to  increase  the  professionalizing  of  so- 
cial work  will  reduce  the  turnover.  In  all  justice  it  must 
be  said,  however,  that  a  nearly  equal  number  are  of  the 
opinion  that  such  a  professionalizing  will  not  only  fail  to 
cut  down  the  turnover  but  will  actually  increase  it. 

A  clearer  idea  of  what  is  involved  in  rapid  turnover 
may  be  derived  from  an  analysis  of  how  long  it  takes  to 
train  or  break  in  a  new  worker.  The  length  of  time  re- 
quired to  train  a  relief  worker  is  apparently  from  three 
months  to  a  lifetime,  if  we  may  judge  from  what  the  re- 
lief agencies  report.  Out  of  fifty-two  agencies  reporting, 
six  figured  this  time  at  from  less  than  sLx  months  to  a 
year;  nineteen  from  one  year  to  two  years;  seven  from  two 
years  to  three  years;  two  from  one  to  three  years;  six 
could  make  no  estimate,  and  one  suggested  that  a  lifetime 
would  be  none  too  long  for  his  particular  kind  of  work. 
It  is  understood  that  in  most  of  these  returns  the  unit  for 
training  is  a  case  visitor.  Naturally,  the  question  is  not 
an  easy  one  to  answer  offhand.  One  agency,  for  instance, 
called  it  an  impossible  question,  as  so  much  depends  upon 
the  individual.  Of  course  it  does,  and  it  also  depends 
upon  the  individual  who  is  supervising  the  training.  Nev- 
ertheless, speaking  by  and  large,  certain  general  princi- 
ples of  practice  emerged.  From  long  experience,  some  of 
the  older  agencies  have  crystallized  this  experience  fairly 
definitely.  Philadelphia,  for  example,  considers  a  worker 
in  training  for  one  year,  with  a  further  year  before  be- 
coming a  superintendent.  Cleveland  has  a  training  of 
seven  months  technically,  but  this  really  means  from  two 
to  three  years.  In  New  York  the  practice  varies,  but  it 
is  not  unusual  for  a  visitor  to  be  promoted  to  an  assistant 
district  secretary  after  one  year  of  training  and  to  a  dis- 
trict secretaryship  in  two  years.  Not  all  of  the  agencies 
have  reduced  their  practice  to  any  such  clear-cut  basis. 


156         THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

Some  of  them  qualify  their  requirement  of  six  months' 
training  by  adding  the  phrase,  "if  the  worker  has  nat- 
ural aptitude."  Some  depend  upon  a  primary  trying- 
out  period  of  three  months  as  the  minimum  time  neces- 
sary to  prove  a  worker's  fitness.  When  one  considers 
that  some  agencies  would  require  an  office  training  of  a 
year  or  so  after  college  and  school  of  philanthropy  courses, 
while  others  would  require  no  more  from  beginners  with 
no  previous  background  of  social  or  college  training,  it  is 
pretty  evident  that  the  process  of  standardization  has  not 
been  carried  very  far  yet  in  this  particular  or  else  that  the 
exigencies  of  local  community  life  vary  enormously. 

The  period  of  training  required  of  most  beginners  in  a 
rehef  agency  figures  largely  in  an  estimate  of  what  it 
really  costs  to  break  in  a  new  worker.  Industry  figures 
this  item  at  from  $40  to  $200,  and  even  as  high  as  $1,000 
for  a  foreman.  The  problem  has  never  been  worked  out 
so  clearly  for  social  agencies,  since  a  cost-accounting  sys- 
tem is  more  difficult  to  operate  in  philanthropic  agencies 
than  in  a  manufacturing  plant.  However,  a  few  sugges- 
tions have  been  gathered  bearing  upon  this  problem.  Out 
of  thirty-three  agencies  reporting  two  figured  the  cost  of 
breaking  in  a  new  worker  at  about  $50;  one  at  from  $50 
to  just  under  $100;  five  from  $100  to  $300;  three  from 
$300  to  $500;  one  at  $600;  one  at  $1,000;  seventeen  had 
never  figured  it  out,  and  three  were  inclined  to  believe 
that  the  worker  really  pays  his  way  from  the  beginning. 
The  agencies  sometimes  figure  that  if  a  worker  sticks  or  if 
a  volunteer  makes  good  the  cost  will  be  eventually  offset 
by  service.  This  may  be  true  if  salaries  are  low.  Let  me 
add  a  few  illustrations  to  the  bare  figures.  Springfield 
(Illinois)  and  Harrisburg  figure  that  the  agencies  lose 
practically  the  first  three  months'salary  of  a  new  worker; 
York  raises  this  to  a  year's  salary;  Lansmg  puts  it  at  $50 
per  month  for  the  first  four  months;  Forth  Worth,  about 
two  months'  salary;  Lincohi,  two  months  of  partially 
handicapped  work  in  the  office;  Washington,  $200  as  a 


THE   LABOR   TURNOVER  IN   SOCIAL  AGENCIES       1 57 

moderate  estimate,  $ioo  for  training  and  $ioo  for 
wasted  relief;  Winnipeg  has  no  definite  figures  but  recog- 
nizes the  waste  in  unnecessary  relief;  Cleveland,  Buffalo, 
Cambridge,  and  other  societies  have  never  reduced  the 
problem  to  terms  of  money  but  know  that  it  costs  much 
in  time,  nervous  energy,  poor  case  work,  lack  of  cooper- 
ation, and  the  very  valuable  time  of  supervisors.  Du- 
luth  exhibits  a  rare  spirit  of  resignation  by  claiming  that 
it  costs  nothing  to  break  in  a  new  worker  because  other 
workers  put  in  overtime!  This,  of  course,  is  simply  side- 
stepping the  issue,  because  somebody  must  eventually 
pay  the  bill.  The  more  scientific  view  is  the  one  sug- 
gested already,  that  if  a  worker  stays  with  his  job  long 
enough  the  employer  may  recoup  the  initial  loss  by  ad- 
justing the  scale  of  salaries  to  cover  the  waste.  At  any 
event  it  is  evident  enough  that  the  rapid  turnover  is  even 
more  vital  to  a  social  agency  than  to  a  business  house  be- 
cause of  the  peculiar  nature  of  social  work.  Good  will 
is  a  precious  asset  in  business,  but  in  a  social  agency  one 
must  consider  not  only  the  attitude  of  clients  but  of  the 
contributing  and  of  the  critical  public  as  well.  What- 
ever tends  to  stretch  unduly  or  to  snap  the  threads  of 
good  will  which  bind  an  agency  to  its  public  must  be 
reckoned  a  serious  loss.  And  even  if  it  cannot  be  stated 
in  definite  terms  on  a  balance  sheet,  there  is  always  a  cer- 
tain loss  of  morale  involved  in  an  unstable  staff.  Right 
here  is  one  of  the  sources  of  weakness  with  which  many 
executives  are  charged;  namely,  that  they  become  so  in- 
volved in  their  case  work  and  office  routine  as  to  lose 
sight  of  any  contact  with  the  public.  By  frank  confes- 
sion and  by  common  experience  we  know  that  much  of 
the  time  and  energ}^  of  executives  goes  into  petty  adjust- 
ments of  mistakes  caused  by  new  workers  which  ought 
to  be  saved  for  the  wider  education  of  the  public.  Any- 
thing which  will  reduce  this  wear  and  tear  upon  the  execu- 
tive and  stabilize  the  staff  should  make  of  such  an  agency 
a  much  more  effective  community  educational  resource. 


158  THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND    SOCIAL  WORK 

Finally,  we  come  to  the  question  of  means  suggested 
for  cutting  down  turnover.  By  an  overwhelming  major- 
ity, higher  salaries  are  set  down  as  the  means  most 
likely  to  accomplish  stability;  not  only  higher  salaries, 
but  better  adjusted  salaries,  standardized  salaries,  and 
perhaps  a  somewhat  nearer  equalization  in  the  salaries 
of  subordinates  and  higher  executives.  Among  a  great 
miscellany  of  suggestions,  the  following  stand  out:  better 
professional  preparation;  reduced  size  of  districts;  better 
general  working  conditions;  more  free  time  for  workers 
to  study  their  work;  more  attention  to  systematic  train- 
ing; stricter  requirements  for  employment;  greater  op- 
portunity for  individual  development  and  encouragement 
to  originality;  dignifying  the  job  by  wider  education 
in  the  meaning  of  social  work;  reducing  overwork  par- 
ticularly during  the  v/inter  rush;  cultivating  loyalty 
to  the  organization;  recognizing  the  value  of  continued 
service;  making  yearly  contracts. 

In  all  this  list  of  suggestions  there  is  not  a  word  in 
favor  of  scientific  testing  to  determine  an  applicant's 
fitness  for  social  work.  Is  it  not  time  at  least  to  begin 
experimenting  with  some  such  psychological  tests  as  the 
University  of  Minnesota  uses  for  prospective  entrants 
into  its  medical  school?  Surely  social  work  has  achieved 
sufficient  definiteness  of  content  and  method  to  be 
capable  of  formulation  into  principles  wliich  could  be 
translated  into  the  categories  of  a  set  of  psychological 
tests. 

In  running  through  the  mass  of  detailed  suggestions 
one  must  not  lose  sight  of  the  fundamental  fact  that 
there  are  two  desirable  objectives  in  the  organization  of 
a  staff:  first,  efficiency,  and  second,  justice.  If  a  staff 
is  dead-centered  it  needs  the  acid  of  disintegration  in- 
stead of  the  glue  of  salaries  to  hold  it  together.  And  on 
the  second  point,  we  are  in  absolute  agreement  with  the 
superintendent  of  the  New  York  Charity  Organization 
Society  who  urges  that  it  is  better  not  to  reduce  the 


THE   LABOR   TURNOVER  IN   SOCIAL  AGENCIES       1 59 

turnover  if  that  would  involve  decreasing  earned  pro- 
motions. 

In  reviewing  this  brief  study  one  cannot  escape  the 
conviction  first  and  last  that  whatever  wastage  in  social 
work  results  from  the  shifting  sands  of  staff  organization 
is  traceable  in  large  part  to  a  lack  of  the  real  scientific 
spirit.  It  is  either  improper  or  insufficient  training;  that 
is,  lack  of  scientific  preparation.  Or  it  is  misplacement, 
which  again  results  from  an  unhappy  combination  of 
lack  of  scientific  acumen  and  lack  of  common  sense. 
Most  of  the  faults  of  personality  which  brought  about 
dismissal  were  open  violations  of  the  social  workers' 
code  as  analyzed  in  our  study  of  the  scientific  spirit. 
Finally  there  is  a  certain  myopia  of  outlook  which  ren- 
ders the  lives  of  some  workers  sterile  and  destroys  what- 
ever soHd  fruit  their  agencies  might  have  been  able  to 
produce.  A  singularly  clear  and  open-minded  letter 
came  to  me  on  this  point  from  an  Associated  Charities 
secretary.  She  writes:  "I  have  come  to  feel  within  the 
last  two  years  that  one  reason  for  the  lack  of  permanency 
in  the  staffs  of  Charity  Organization  Societies  may  be  a 
certain  unrest  and  impatience  for  results  among  the 
workers  themselves.  When  workers  learn  to  take  the 
long  view  which  looks  for  permanent  results  only  in 
terms  of  years,  and  to  form  the  habit  of  taking  root,  for 
better  or  worse,  in  one  community  and  identifying  them- 
selves with  the  life  of  that  community,  we  will  probably 
for  the  first  time  realize  the  possibilities  of  our  profession." 
She  is  right;  but  perhaps  it  is  not  mere  crazy  optimism 
which  bids  us  believe  that  when  social  work  shall  have 
attained  the  full  status  of  a  profession  and  accepted  all 
the  responsibilities  laid  upon  a  profession  as  distinct 
from  a  trade,  a  really  scientific  attitude  will  mark  the 
mind  of  the  social  worker,  which  will  confer  poise  upon 
the  individual  worker,  stability  upon  his  organization, 
and  long  range,  illuminated,  well-articulated  types  of 
service  upon  our  patient  communities. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  ADVENTUROUS  ATTITUDE  IN  SOCIAL  WORK 


One  aspect  of  the  scientific  spirit  has  so  far  been 
allowed  no  explicit  share  in  this  study  of  the  background 
of  social  work.  Yet  it  is  extremely  important  and  must 
have  been  sensed  as  a  constant  overtone  in  the  discus- 
sion. I  mean  the  adventurous  spirit.  Without  the 
gesture  of  daring,  the  hardihood  of  thinking  boldly,  the 
undertaking  of  even  the  most  unpromising  experiments, 
the  trying  of  what  appear  to  be  hopelessly  unopenable 
doors,  without  these  science  is  dead,  just  as  religion 
without  faith  is  dead.  Indeed,  as  we  have  already  shown, 
science  has  had  its  martyrs  for  the  faith,  and  it  was  just 
that  magnificent  exhibition  of  half  a  century  of  militant 
faith  which  has  shaken  the  world  out  of  its  complacency 
and  compelled  it  to  adjust  its  thinking  to  a  universe  of 
new  dimensions.  Science,  then,  is  adventure  m  spirit 
and  method,  although  to  be  sure  we  judge  it  finally  by 
its  works. 

Ideas  usually  pass  through  at  least  four  stages.  First, 
what  might  be  called  the  incubator  or  germinal  period. 
Next,  the  apologetic,  the  stage  of  tentative  search  for 
backing.  Third,  the  militant  or  aggressive  stage,  when 
powerful  exponents  conduct  bold  propaganda,  assume 
the  airs  of  the  victorious,  and  feel  the  thrills  of  conquest. 
Finally,  the  obsolescent  or  conventional  stage  when  the 
idea  has  outlived  its  usefulness  or  everybody  is  tired  of 
it  or  it  ceases  to  shock  anybody  or  has  been  fully  inte- 
grated to  the  social  tradition.  Scientific  ideas,  such  as 
evolution  or  eugenics,  have  been  making  history  in  these 

i6o 


THE    ADVENTUROUS    ATTITUDE    IN    SOCIAL    WORK      l6l 

modes.  Apparently  scientific  social  work  is  now  entering 
the  third  stage;  and  this  is  by  no  means  an  abnormal 
development.  For  social  work,  if  it  is  to  be  truly  scien- 
tific and  able  to  prove  itself,  must  partake  of  the  quality 
of  daring  and  cannot  escape  the  tendency  to  militancy. 
This  does  not  mean,  however,  any  counsel  to  obstinacy 
or  heedlessness  or  wild-cat  schemes — they  are  antipodal 
to  the  spirit  of  science.  Hence  its  venturesome  experi- 
ments must  be  committed  to  the  trained  and  tried  hand 
and  not  to  the  tyro  if  they  are  to  result  in  creditable 
works  and  the  means  of  genuine  social  advance. 

The  war  has  given  opportunity  for  trying  daring  social 
experiments  on  an  unheard-of  scale.  Now  that  the 
agony  of  suspense  is  over  and  the  dusts  of  feverish  activ- 
ity are  blowing  away  it  is  profitable  to  examine  what  has 
been  going  on,  how  these  experiments  comport  with 
the  spirit  of  science,  and  how  much  of  war-time  social 
adventuring  may  be  expected  to  carry  over  into  the 
permanent  life  of  peace. 

Social  science,  we  are  told,  has  not  yet  reached  the  stage 
of  being  a  predictive  science,  in  the  same  sense  that  the 
astronomers  are  able  to  forecast  an  eclipse  or  a  comet's 
recurrence.  We  know  only  too  well  that  it  is  impossible 
always  to  see  through  in  all  of  their  ramifications  the  pos- 
sible effects  of  any  piece  of  social  reform  or  social  work. 
Neither  sociologists  nor  social  workers  are  crystal  gazers. 
But  they  in  common  with  all  scientific  workers  not  only 
have  the  right,  but  are  called  upon  to  extract  some  mean- 
ing from  their  gathering  of  facts.  This  is  not  so  much 
mere  prophecy  as  it  is  observation  of  straws  blown  by 
certain  currents  of  events.  However,  in  the  observation 
tour  which  we  are  about  to  undertake,  we  shall  not  try 
to  play  the  part  of  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  and  anticipate  in 
great  detail  what  the  caldron  of  events  is  about  to  boil 
forth.  If  we  drop  into  the  prophetic  vein  we  shall  try  to 
observe  the  rules  of  the  game  which  distinguish  scientific 
observation  from  amateur  prediction. 


l62  THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

II 

While  I  have  in  mind  primarily  the  effect  of  the  war 
upon  social  work,  I  am  not  interested  in  predicting  how 
many  social  workers  are  going  to  be  able  to  hold  their 
jobs  after  the  war.  Some  of  us,  I  hope,  will  lose  them. 
It  is  always  our  business  to  stimulate  preventive  meas- 
ures which  will  render  our  own  little  particular  minis- 
trations superfluous.  But  other  kmds  of  social  work  will 
undoubtedly  develop.  This  war  may  end  war,  but  it 
will  certainly  not  bring  the  millennium.  Hence,  social 
workers  need  not  look  forward  to  a  general  demobiUza- 
tion  of  their  brigades.  There  will  still  be  plenty  for  them 
to  do.  No  doubt  there  will  be  many  shifts  in  attitude 
and  method.  New  concepts  of  reHef  will  probably  be 
estabUshed,  Hkewise  new  educational  attitudes,  new  atti- 
tudes between  employer  and  welfare  staff.  Industrial 
relations  workers,  for  example,  may  modify  profoundly 
their  view  of  their  jobs;  they  will  perhaps  even  in  some 
cases  begin  to  play  the  part  of  the  tail  waggmg  the  dog. 

In  general  we  may  say  the  great  war  merely  empha- 
sized three  ante-bellum  trends;  namely,  the  tendencies 
towards  organized  criticism  and  pubUcity,  community 
control  over  all  community  conditions,  and  the  use  of 
trained  experts.  Not  all  these  are  moving  at  equal  rates, 
however;  but  on  the  whole  we  are  moving  at  a  vertig- 
inous speed,  and  we  are  learning  tremendous  lessons  with- 
out stopping  to  figure  the  cost.  Just  as  the  Federal  Con- 
gress with  comparatively  little  discussion  voted  in  one 
year  after  the  beginning  of  the  war  larger  appropriations 
than  the  total  cost  of  our  national  govermnent  since  its 
foundation,  so  we  are  leaping  with  more  than  seven- 
leagued  boots  in  the  country's  social  program.  In  less 
than  six  months  after  the  war  America  had  jumped  fifty 
years  or  more,  and  in  so  far  as  the  army  and  navy  are 
concerned,  distanced  every  competitor  in  the  world  in 
the  matter  of  social  insurance. 


THE    ADVENTUROUS    ATTITUDE    IN    SOCIAL    WORK      1 63 

Social  work  in  spite  of  these  changes  will  continue  to 
recognize  that  social  progress  is  the  result  of  two  proc- 
cesses;  namely,  case  work  with  individuals,  formative, 
reformative,  amehorative,  personal  service;  and  manipu- 
lation of  mass  conditions  in  the  environment,  preven- 
tive and  legislative  measures.  But  in  the  future  social 
work  will  probably  conceive  both  of  these  phases  more 
adventurously. 

Since  the  social  worker  is  so  frequently  an  optimist  by 
the  very  necessities  of  his  profession,  he  is  quite  open  to 
the  fallacy  of  confusing  swiftness  of  motion  with  actually 
getting  somewhere  promptly  and  surely.  Hence,  in  view- 
ing the  war  situation,  one  must  observe  two  general  cau- 
tions. First,  while  as  individuals  and  as  communities 
we  have  learned  many  new  lessons,  perhaps  they  are  only 
like  cramming  for  an  examination,  or  a  species  of  death- 
bed repentance.  Remember  that  human  nature  changes 
but  slowly.  Second,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  we  are  more 
of  a  nation  than  ever  before,  owing  to  the  spread  of  a  vast 
new  network  of  organizations  (for  food,  coal,  transport 
control,  war  camp  service.  Red  Cross  work,  etc.),  and 
although  new  habits  of  social  perception  have  sprung 
into  being  and  new  efftciencies  and  capacities  have  been 
uncovered,  we  must  not  expect  all  these  new  war-born 
virtues  and  measures  to  carry  over  into  peace  times. 
That  would  put  us  on  a  perennial  war  footing  and  realize 
our  worst  fears  of  militarism.  But  some  will  almost  nec- 
essarily carry  over.  People  will  not  easily  forget,  for  ex- 
ample, that  if  a  clubhouse  for  men  in  war  khaki  is  a  good 
place  as  an  antidote  to  the  saloon  and  the  brothel  in  their 
leisure  hours,  a  clubhouse  will  be  equally  good  for  the 
homeless  man,  the  unattached  casual  migratory  worker, 
or  the  immigrant  in  times  of  peace.  Neither  will  it  be 
easy  to  convince  some  of  our  people  that  if  a  black  man 
is  a  good  enough  American  to  send  to  the  trenches  to 
save  Democracy  in  France  he  is  not  a  good  enough  Amer- 
ican to  ride  in  a  white  man's  sleeping  car  or  put  up  at  a 


164         THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

decent  hotel,  or  go  to  a  decent  school,  or  vote  unham- 
pered for  Democracy  at  home. 


Ill 

The  industrial  world  is  experiencing  a  series  of  mira- 
cles. It  is  slowly  dawning  upon  us  that  capitalism  as  we 
know  it  now  is  not  the  only  nor  the  eternal  economic 
form.  Indeed,  does  it  not  look  as  though  old-fashioned 
laissez  faire  capitalism  is  on  the  run?  Mr.  Schwab 
blurts  out  his  conviction  that  the  future  is  to  be  domi- 
nated by  the  man  who  labors  with  his  hands.  Many  re- 
actionary newspapers  which  were  caught  napping  have 
made  grotesque  figures  of  themselves  by  attempting  to 
explain  what  Mr.  Schwab  meant  and  by  assuring  their 
readers  that  Mr.  Schwab  did  not  realize  what  he  meant 
or  did  not  say  it.  Yet  Mr,  Schwab  and  other  business 
leaders  know  exactly  what  they  are  talking  about.  They 
are  sensitive  to  the  drift  of  events.  Mr.  Hoover  feels  it 
strongly.  In  his  address  to  the  Pittsburgh  Press  Club 
in  April,  19 18,  he  said:  "As  I  have  seen  this  war  develop 
from  an  active  participation  in  its  backwash  and  misery, 
since  the  first  day,  I  have  seen  growing  out  of  the  masses 
of  people  in  every  country  aspirations  for  a  great  economic 
change.  That  change,  broadly,  will  be  that  those  who 
work  with  their  hands  will  obtain  a  larger  portion  of  this 
world's  goods  and  those  that  work  with  their  brains  will 
obtain  less."  A  significant  straw  here  is  the  fact  that 
American  editors  are  really  beginning  to  take  notice  of 
labor-party  programs.  Recall  the  columns  of  news  ca- 
bled across  from  England  about  the  after-war  reconstruc- 
tion program  of  the  British  Labor  Party.  The  famous 
visit  which  President  Wilson  made  to  the  American  Fed- 
eration of  Labor  meeting  in  Buffalo  late  in  19 17  and  his 
address  there  put  the  stamp  of  national  recognition  upon 
the  principle  of  collective  bargaining. 

This  principle  is  becoming  more  and  more  one  of  the 


THE    ADVENTUROUS    ATTITUDE    IN    SOCIAL   WORK      165 

fundamental  attitudes  of  the  American  government.  ^  A 
still  more  hopeful  sign  is  the  growing  recognition 
of  industrial  democracy.  That  the  government  could 
print  so  vivid  and  frank  an  avowal  of  industrial  mis- 
management as  the  report  of  President  Wilson's  medi- 
tation commission  on  the  Arizona  mining  situation 
February  10,  19 18,  and  that  the  government  should  fol- 
low it  up  by  the  indictment  of  twenty-five  business  men 
by  a  federal  grand  jury,  is  a  pretty  clear  sign  that  some 
leaders  are  at  least  becoming  aware  of  the  fact  that  sa- 
botage and  the  anarchy  of  direct  violent  action  are  swords 
which  employers  no  less  than  I.  W.  W.'s  have  been  used 
to  wieldmg.  The  implication  is  that  we  are  beginning  to 
see  how  some  form  of  orderly  collective  bargainmg  is  the 
only  method  by  which  violence  in  industrial  struggles 
can  be  diverted.  Men  are  asking  themselves  which  is 
worse,  "ca  canny"  or  sweated  wages  and  speeding  up. 
They  are  both  leaves  from  the  same  deadly  upas  tree, 
and  they  represent  the  same  unproductive  state  of  mind 
manifested  by  the  old  schooldame  who  said,  "It's  but 
little  they  pays  me  and  it's  but  little  I  teaches  them." 

Social  workers  will  necessarily  cultivate  a  closer  under- 
standing of  and  with  labor.  They  must  not  hesitate  to 
show  where  they  stand,  not  as  timid  neutrals  awaiting  a 
knock-out  fight  between  workmen  and  employer,  not  as 
Brother  Fearfuls  afraid  of  having  their  heads  cut  ofif  in 
some  new  Labor  Reign  of  Terror,  not  as  accomplices  in 
putting  over  a  class-conscious  program,  but  as  real  media- 
tors and  interpreters,  as  real  teachers,  aiding  labor  to 
educate  and  discipline  itself  for  sane  and  productive  cit- 
izenship as  partners  in  the  common  job  of  making  life 
more  tolerable  and  just.  They  will  do  well  to  remember 
that  labor  statesmen  though  not  completely  "in  the  sad- 
dle" begin  now  to  share  the  floor  with  professional  dip- 
lomats. They  will  remember  also  that  these  labor  states- 
men are  puttmg  forward  new  and  constructive  plans  for 
education,   industrial  peace,   and   social  justice  which 


1 66         THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

would  have  seemed  utterly  Utopian  had  they  not  already 
begun  in  a  measure  to  realize  themselves. 

The  right,  or  inevitability  perhaps  I  should  say,  of 
eminent  domain  over  both  capital  and  income  forces  its 
way  month  by  month  to  clearer  recognition  by  statesmen, 
capitalists,  and  workers.  A  simple  analogy  is  largely 
responsible.  The  workers  gave  up  both  capital  and  in- 
come when  they  went  to  the  trenches.  Hence,  the  stay- 
at-homes  must  not  only  not  profiteer,  but  must  pay  all 
the  costs.  Conscription  or  draft  means  a  virtual  con- 
fiscation of  both  the  life  and  the  property  of  the  soldier. 
While  recognizing  that  men  will  frequently  give  their 
lives  much  more  readily  than  their  purses  our  rulers  are 
apparently  not  disposed  to  halt  in  their  exaction  of  prop- 
erty as  well  as  life.  We  seem  to  be  in  for  what  our  courts, 
a  few  years  ago,  would  have  gravely  tabooed  as  con- 
fiscation of  property.  Lloyd  George  says  that  capital 
must  pay  for  the  cost  of  war.  Francis  Heney  urges  this 
as  the  time  to  begin  now  to  equalize  opportunity  by 
cutting  off  special  privileges  and  by  reacquiring  the  five 
fundamental  elements  of  the  public  domain — timber,  coal, 
oil,  natural  gas,  and  water  power.  Both  Lloyd  George 
and  Heney  may  be  demagogues,  but  the  ideas  they  voice 
are  becoming  more  and  more  well-articulated  public 
opinion.  The  new  income  and  excess  profits  taxes  are 
the  surest  indication  that  this  idea  of  eminent  domain 
over  property  will  not  be  diverted  to  some  future  gen- 
eration, but  that  it  is  actually  to  be  put  into  practice 
early.  And  we  may  be  pretty  sure  that  these  new  ad- 
ventures in  taxation  and  the  lessons  learned  from  them 
will  not  be  lost  immediately  after  the  treaty  of  peace. 
The  standard  books  on  taxation  are  in  a  fair  way  of  being 
reedited  or  scrapped  after  the  present  crisis. 

There  seems  to  be  a  pretty  well-marked  current  toward 
wider  control  over  prices  and  wages.  The  British  Labor 
Party  demands  the  fixing  of  maximum  prices  and  statu- 
tory minimum  wages.    There  is  a  strong  possibility  that 


THE    ADVENTUROUS    ATTITUDE    IN    SOCIAL   WORK      1 67 

the  war-time  measures  for  conservation  of  food  and  for 
price  limitation  may  prove  so  satisfactory  that  they  will, 
in  certain  fields  at  least,  be  carried  over  into  peace  times. 
As  to  sumptuary  legislation,  prophecy  becomes  somewhat 
difficult.  The  war  necessarily  restricted  the  output  of 
luxuries  and  through  social  pressure  hindered  their  com- 
sumption.  National  prohibition  is  the  most  outstanding 
example  of  this  field  of  activity.  War-time  prohibition 
rang  the  knell  of  the  alcohol  traffic  in  this  country.  Be- 
cause the  British  Army  Council  issued  an  order  limiting 
the  height  of  women's  leather  shoes,  some  people  have 
become  alarmed  lest  we  be  regimented  and  forced  into 
a  military  control  of  our  dress  if  not  of  our  occupation. 
There  are  two  possibilities,  however,  as  to  the  outcome  of 
this  whole  business  of  fixing  prices  and  wages  as  well  as 
of  decreeing  what  we  shall  and  what  we  shall  not  eat  or 
drink  or  wear.  The  people  may  acquire  a  taste  for  such 
regimentation  and  may  demand  that  it  be  retained  and 
even  extended;  or  they  may,  on  the  other  hand,  get  sick 
of  it  and  react  in  the  other  direction  toward  an  extreme 
laissez  /aire.  Unless  all  indications  fail,  our  apparent 
course  will  be  toward  present  or  even  more  intensive 
control  within  certain  fields  of  production  and  distribu- 
tion and  in  the  fixing  of  wages  and  prices,  while  in  others 
the  normal  state  of  peace  economics  will  be  resumed.  But 
even  this  temporary  moratorium  on  accepted  economic 
"laws"  is  sufficient  to  give  the  conservative  supporters 
of  economic  orthodoxy  mie  mauvaise  quart  d'heure. 

We  seem  increasingly  committed  also  to  the  idea  of  the 
State  as  proprietor.  Of  course  for  a  long  time  we  have 
been  accustomed  to  the  state  account  system  as  used  in 
certain  prisons  for  the  marketing  of  prison-produced 
goods  such  as  binder  twine,  farm  machinery,  rag  carpets, 
canned  goods,  brushes,  and  brooms.  But  apparently 
these  feeble  beginnings  are  going  to  receive  an  enor- 
mous extension.  Not  only  exigencies  of  the  war  itself 
but  the  stirrings  of  public  opinion  and  the  programs  for 


1 68         THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

social  reconstruction  are  uniting  to  crystallize  a  strong 
demand  for  further  nationalization  of  basic  utilities. 
The  British  Labor  Party  in  very  measured  terms  asks 
for  the  nationalization  of  land,  railways,  mines,  and 
electric  power.  In  America  the  Nonpartisan  League  and 
other  agencies  more  pleasing  to  the  capitalistic  press  are 
making  similar  demands.  More  cities  are  considering 
taking  over  traction  systems.  The  attorney  general  of 
Massachusetts  went  on  record  recently  as  favoring  the 
public  purchase  and  operation  of  the  Boston  and  Maine 
Railroad  system.  Such  demands,  therefore,  are  no 
longer  in  the  nature  of  outlawry,  for  they  represent  the 
well-thought-out  convictions  not  only  of  propagandist 
agencies  but  of  a  very  numerous  group  of  conservative 
and  successful  business  men  who  hold  these  views  even 
though  they  do  not  use  the  soap  box  for  airing  them. 

The  enormous  success  of  the  United  States  Govern- 
ment's Mihtary  and  Naval  Insurance  Act  is  another 
straw  indicating  the  way  the  current  of  economic  events 
may  be  expected  to  turn  in  the  near  future.  With  an 
army  of  over  3,000,000  men,  the  government  wrote 
insurance  to  the  amount  of  some  thirty-seven  billions 
of  dollars.  This  makes  it  the  greatest  single  life-insurance 
company  in  the  world,  which,  without  having  an  actual 
monopoly,  cannot  fail  to  be  a  dominating  factor  in  the 
insurance  business  of  the  whole  country.  Whether  the 
idea  of  military  preparedness  leads  America  into  creating 
an  enlarged  permanent  military  establishment  profiting 
by  the  present  generous  insurance  plan  or  not,  govern- 
ment insurance  on  a  huge  scale  is  evidently  here  to  stay. 
Whether  this  will  mean  that  in  the  process  of  reconstruc- 
tion the  government  will  tend  to  squat  on  the  whole 
insurance  field  is  a  matter  beyond  prophecy.  There  is  no 
doubt,  however,  that  the  strong  hand  of  the  government 
will  act  as  a  further  stabilizer  of  the  insurance  business. 
The  very  necessity  for  working  out  some  modus  operandi 
whereby  war-time  insurance  can  be  converted  into  or- 


THE    AD\TENTIIROUS    ATTITUDE    IN    SOCIAL    WORK      1 69 

dinary  life  insurance  means  that  some  sort  of  under- 
standing must  be  reached  with  the  private  insurance 
companies.  This  in  all  probability  will  result  in  pretty 
close  government  regulation  and  control.  From  the 
standpoint  of  insurance  as  an  idea,  this  policy  is  of  great 
significance.  It  means  that  the  pressure  brought  upon 
enlisted  men  to  insure  under  the  government  act  will 
teach  them  the  value  of  insurance  either  under  some 
form  of  ordinary  commercial  Ufe  insurance  or  some 
contributory  form  of  state  insurance.  It  means  also  that 
men  who  have  already  been  carrying  small  insurance 
poHcies  will  probably  increase  them;  for  instance,  there 
are  many  cases  reported  of  men  who  have  been  carrying 
a  thousand  dollar  policy  in  a  commercial  company  who 
now  have  taken  the  full  ten-thousand  dollar  limit  allowed 
under  the  government  scheme.  There  seems,  however, 
to  be  no  indication  that  the  government  insurance 
scheme  is  going  to  crush  out  private  companies.  To  the 
contrary,  for  the  first  year  after  the  government's  policy 
went  into  effect,  some  of  the  big  private  insurance  com- 
panies claim  they  did  a  larger  business  than  ever,  in- 
dicating what  I  just  pointed  out;  namely,  that  the  whole 
concept  of  insurance  has  been  stimulated  and  is  making 
an  appeal  to  men  who  never  considered  it  seriously  before. 
In  spite  of  the  very  marked  tendency  of  many  dis- 
charged soldiers  to  allow  their  war-time  policies  to  lapse, 
the  lesson  and  the  stimulus  cannot  wholly  be  lost. 

As  a  more  or  less  conscious  corollary  to  these  schemes 
of  insurance  must  be  noted  the  apparent  disposition  on 
the  part  of  this  country  to  handle  more  vigorously  than 
ever  the  unemployment  evil.  The  British  Labor  Party 
in  its  reconstruction  program  calls  for  a  national  and 
imperial  policy  for  the  abolition  of  unemployment  from 
the  British  Empire. 

"It  has  always  been  a  fundamental  principle  of  the  Labor 
Party  (a  point  on  which,  significantly  enough,  it  has  not  been 


170         THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND  SOCIAL  WORK 

followed  by  either  of  the  other  political  parties)  that,  in  a  modern 
industrial  community,  it  is  one  of  the  foremost  obligations  of  the 
government  to  find,  for  every  willing  worker,  whether  by  hand  or 
by  brain,  productive  work  at  standard  rates. 

"It  is  accordingly  the  duty  of  the  government  to  adopt  a  policy 
of  deliberately  and  systematically  preventing  the  occurrence  of 
unemployment,  instead  of  (as  heretofore)  letting  unemployment 
occur,  and  then  seeking,  vainly  and  expensively,  to  relieve  the 
unemployed.  It  is  now  known  that  the  government  can,  if  it 
chooses,  arrange  the  public  works  and  the  orders  of  national  de- 
partments and  local  authorities  in  such  a  way  as  to  maintain  the 
aggregate  demand  for  labor  in  the  whole  kingdom  (including  that 
of  capitalist  employers)  approximately  at  a  uniform  level  from  year 
to  year;  and  it  is  therefore  a  primary  obligation  of  the  government 
to  prevent  any  considerable  or  widespread  fluctuations  in  the  total 
numbers  employed  in  times  of  good  or  bad  trade.  But  this  is  not 
all.  In  order  to  prepare  for  the  possibility  of  there  being  any  un- 
employment, either  in  the  course  of  demobilization  or  in  the  first 
years  of  peace,  it  is  essential  that  the  government  should  make  all 
necessary  preparations  for  putting  instantly  in  hand,  directly  or 
through  the  local  authorities,  such  urgently  needed  public  works 
as  (o)  the  rehousing  of  the  population  alike  in  rural  districts,  min- 
ing villages,  and  town  slums,  to  the  extent  possibly  of  a  million 
new  cottages  and  an  outlay  of  three  hundred  millions  sterling; 

(b)  the  immediate  making  good  of  the  shortage  of  schools,  training 
colleges,  technical  colleges,  etc.,  and  the  engagement  of  the  nec- 
essary  additional   teaching,   clerical,   and  administrative   staffs; 

(c)  new  roads;  (d)  light  railways;  (e)  the  unification  and  reorgani- 
zation of  the  railway  and  canal  system;  (/)  afforestation;  (g)  the 
reclamation  of  land;  {h)  the  development  and  better  equipment  of 
our  ports  and  harbors;  (i)  the  opening  up  of  access  to  land  by  co- 
operative small  holdings  and  in  other  practicable  ways.  More- 
over, in  order  to  relieve  any  pressure  of  an  overstocked  labor  mar- 
ket, the  opportunity  should  be  taken,  if  unemployment  should 
threaten  to  become  widespread,  (a)  immediately  to  raise  the  school- 
leaving  age  to  16;  (b)  greatly  to  increase  the  number  of  scholarships 
and  bursaries  for  secondary  and  higher  education;  and  (c)  sub- 
stantially to  shorten  the  hours  of  labor  of  all  young  persons,  even 
to  a  greater  extent  than  the  eight  hours  per  week  contemplated  in 
the  new  education  bill,  in  order  to  enable  them  to  attend  technical 
and  other  classes  in  the  daytime.    Finally,  wherever  practicable, 


THE    ADVENTUROUS    ATTITUDE    IN    SOCIAL    WORK      171 

the  hours  of  adult  labor  should  be  reduced  to  not  more  than  forty- 
eight  per  week,  without  reduction  of  the  standard  rates  of  wages." 

In  our  own  country  the  Department  of  Labor  is  taking 
hold  resolutely  of  the  situation  and  is  extending  and 
coordinating  its  system  of  employment  bureaus  in  so  far 
as  congressional  imagination  allows  it  funds. 

The  government's  land  and  housing  policy  is  another 
remarkable  departure  from  staid  orthodox  economic 
policy.  Both  Maine  and  California  are  now  either  mak- 
ing loans  to  farmers  or  else  preparing  good  land  for  their 
settlement.  This  is  by  no  means  the  old  policy  of  simply 
turning  loose  ardent  young  people  upon  unbroken  and 
untracked  public  land  where  they  would  work  their 
souls  out  in  the  bitterness  of  trying  to  wrest  a  living 
from  the  savage  frontier.  There  is  a  vigorous  demand  in 
many  quarters  for  extension  of  this  policy  of  utilizing 
good  public  lands  as  a  method  of  easing  up  the  pressure 
of  demobilization.  This  is  proposed  also  in  England, 
Canada,  and  Australia.  Land  for  soldiers  has  always 
been  an  attractive  method  of  taking  up  the  industrial 
slack  at  the  end  of  a  war,  but  it  has  so  frequently  been  a 
wasteful  and  heart-eating  proposition  that  the  new 
administrative  intelligence  will  probably  follow  the  lead 
of  California  rather  than  our  own  precedent  after  the 
Civil  War.  The  strong  letter  which  Secretary  Lane 
wrote  to  President  Wilson  in  June,  1918,  heightens  this 
conviction.     He  said,  in  part: 

"My  Dear  Mr.  President:  I  beHeve  the  time  has  come  when 
we  should  give  thought  to  the  preparation  of  plans  for  providing 
opportunity  for  our  soldiers  returning  from  the  war.  Because 
this  department  has  handled  similar  problems,  I  consider  it  my 
duty  to  bring  this  matter  to  the  attention  of  yourself  and  Congress. 

"At  the  close  of  the  Civil  War  America  faced  a  somewhat  sim- 
ilar situation.  But  fortunately  at  that  time  the  public  domain 
offered  opportunity  to  the  home-returning  soldiers.  The  great 
part  the  veterans  of  that  war  played  in  developing  the  West  is 
one  of  our  epics.    The  homestead  law  had  been  signed  by  Lincoln 


172         THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

ill  the  second  year  of  the  war,  so  that  out  of  our  wealth  in  lands  we 
had  farms  to  ofifer  the  million  of  veterans.  It  was  also  the  era  of 
transcontinental  railway  construction.  It  was  likewise  the  period 
of  rapid;  yet  broad  and  full,  development  of  towns  and  communi- 
ties and  states. 

"To  the  great  number  of  returning  soldiers  land  will  offer  the 
great  and  fundamental  opportunity.  The  experience  of  wars 
points  out  the  lesson  that  our  service  men,  because  of  army  life 
with  its  openness  and  activity,  will  largely  seek  out-of-doors  vo- 
cations and  occupations.  This  fact  is  accepted  by  the  aUied  Euro- 
pean nations.  That  is  why  their  programs  and  policies  of  relocat- 
ing and  readjustment  emphasize  the  opportunities  on  the  land  for 
the  returning  soldier.  The  question  then  is  '  What  land  can  be 
made  available  for  farm  homes  for  our  soldiers? ' 

"We  do  not  have  the  bountiful  public  domain  of  the  sixties  and 
seventies.  In  a  hteral  sense,  for  the  use  of  it  on  a  generous  scale  for 
soldier  farm  homes  as  in  the  sixties,  '  the  pubHc  domain  is  gone.' 
The  official  figures  at  the  end  of  the  fiscal  year,  June  30,  191 7, 
show  this :  We  have  unappropriated  land  in  the  continental  United 
States  to  the  amount  of  230,657,755  acres.  It  is  safe  to  say  that 
not  one  half  of  this  land  will  ever  prove  to  be  cultivable  in  any 
sense. 

"While  we  do  not  have  that  matchless  public  domain  of  '65,  we 
do  have  milHons  of  acres  of  undeveloped  lands  that  can  be  made 
available  for  our  home-coming  soldiers.  We  have  arid  lands  in  the 
West;  cut-over  lands  in  the  Northwest,  Lake  States,  and  South; 
and  also  swamp  lands  in  the  Middle  West  and  South,  which  can 
be  made  available  through  the  proper  development.  Much  of  this 
land  can  be  made  suitable  for  farm  homes  if  properly  handled.  But 
it  will  require  that  each  type  of  land  be  dealt  with  in  its  own  par- 
ticular fashion.  The  arid  land  will  require  water,  the  cut-over 
land  wiU  require  clearing,  and  the  swamp  land  must  be  drained. 
Without  any  of  these  aids,  they  remain  largely  '  No  Man's  Land.' 
The  solution  of  these  problems  is  no  new  thing.  In  the  admirable 
achievement  of  the  Reclamation  Service  in  reclamation  and  drain- 
age we  have  abundant  proof  of  what  can  be  done. 

"Looking  toward  the  construction  of  additional  projects,  I  am 
glad  to  say  that  plans  and  investigations  have  been  under  way  for 
some  time.  .  .  Any  plan  for  the  development  of  land  for  the  re- 
turning soldier  will  come  face  to  face  with  the  fact  that  a  new  pohcy 
will  have  to  meet  the  new  conditions.    The  era  of  free  or  cheap 


THE    ADVENTUROUS    ATTITUDE    IN    SOCIAL   WORK      1 73 

land  in  the  United  States  has  passed.  We  must  meet  the  new 
conditions  of  developing  lands  in  advance — security  must  to  a 
degree  displace  speculation. 

"There  are  certain  tendencies  which  we  ought  to  face  frankly  in 
our  consideration  of  a  policy  for  land  for  the  home-coming  soldier. 
First,  the  drift  to  farm  tenancy.  The  experience  of  the  world 
shows  without  question  that  the  happiest  people,  the  best  farms, 
and  the  soundest  political  conditions  are  found  where  the  farmer 
owns  the  home  and  the  farm  lands.  .  .  It  is  evident  that  since 
the  war  in  Europe,  there  has  been  a  decided  increase  in  the  trend 
toward  the  city,  because  of  industrial  conditions.  The  adoption 
by  the  United  States  of  new  policies  in  its  land-development  plans 
for  returning  veterans  will  also  contribute  to  the  ameUoration  of 
these  two  dangers  to  American  life. 

"A  plan  of  land  development,  whereby  land  is  developed  in  large 
areas,  subdivided  into  individual  farms,  then  sold  to  actual  bona- 
fide  farmers  on  a  long-time  payment  basis,  has  been  in  force  not 
only  in  the  United  States  under  the  Reclamation  Act,  but  also  in 
many  other  countries  for  several  years.  It  has  proved  a  distinct 
success. 

"A  very  small  sum  of  money  put  into  the  hands  of  men  of 
thought,  experience,  and  vision  will  give  us  a  program  which  will 
make  us  feel  entirely  confident  that  we  are  not  to  be  submerged 
industrially  or  otherwise  by  labor  which  we  will  not  be  able  to  ab- 
sorb, or  that  we  would  be  in  a  condition  where  we  would  show  a 
lack  of  respect  for  those  who  return  as  heroes,  but  who  will  be 
without  means  of  immediate  self-support.  A  million  or  two  dol- 
lars, if  appropriated  now,  will  put  this  work  well  under  way. 

"This  plan  does  not  contemplate  anything  like  charity  to  the 
soldier.  He  is  not  to  be  given  a  bounty.  He  is  not  to  be  made  to 
feel  that  he  is  a  dependent.  On  the  contrary,  he  is  to  continue  in  a 
sense  in  the  service  of  the  government.  Instead  of  destroying  our 
enemies  he  is  to  develop  our  resources." 

It  thus  appears  that  this  demand  for  land  for  dis- 
charged soldiers  is  from  certain  angles  inseparably  iden- 
tified with  the  work  in  vocational  reeducation  and  re- 
habilitation of  the  war-disabled. 

Closely  allied  to  the  call  for  a  new  public-land  policy 
is  the  government's  manifest  determination  to  enter  at 
last  upon  a  definite  city  plannmg  and  housing  policy. 


174         THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

The  appointment  of  national  housing  administrators  and 
the  creation  of  a  housing  corporation  within  the  Depart- 
ment of  Labor  indicates  that  however  tardily  we  may- 
have  entered  the  game,  we  are  in  it  to  stay.  While  this 
was  a  war  emergency  measure,  and  despite  congressional 
mangling  of  the  scheme  immediately  after  the  armistice, 
it  is  not  Hkely  to  be  confined  to  the  period  of  the  war. 
Our  newly  found  contacts  with  Europe  will  make  it  much 
easier  to  bring  across  the  Atlantic  the  new  ideas  in  this 
field  which  a  generation's  work  over  there  has  accumu- 
lated. It  is  to  be  remembered  that  European  warring 
nations  even  in  the  midst  of  their  manifold  problems 
have  been  tremendously  concerned  over  housing  and 
town  planning.  The  building  up  of  new  munition  cen- 
ters, the  cry  for  taking  advantage  of  the  period  of  demob- 
ilization to  relieve  city  slums  and  unnecessary  conges- 
tion, together  with  the  reconstruction  of  devastated 
towns,  will  give  an  impetus  to  new  scientific  town  plan- 
ning. The  proof  that  these  ideas  are  penetrating  America 
is  that  special  courses  on  the  subject  of  scientific  town 
planning  and  reconstruction  work  are  already  proposed 
by  certain  American  colleges.  There  is  every  prospect 
that  with  the  multiplying  of  city  planning  commissions 
some  of  these  projects  will  finally  come  to  a  head  instead 
of  being  merely  filed  away  on  already  overloaded  library 
shelves. 

We  may  forecast,  moreover,  an  increasing  acceptance 
of  the  principle  of  the  white  label  and  other  production 
standards.  The  Council  of  National  Defense  early  after 
its  creation  recommended  for  all  manufacturers  of  gov- 
ernment suppHes  proper  standards  regarding  women's 
working  hours,  wages,  sanitary  conditions,  etc.  The  Sec- 
retary of  War  in  his  creation  of  the  board  of  standards  for 
clothing  manufacture,  although  it  was  abolished  a  few 
months  after  its  creation,  fixed  a  policy  which  was  as- 
sumed definitely  by  the  War  Department  for  the  control 
of  its  purchases.    This,  no  doubt,  was  due  to  the  fact  that 


THE    ADVENTUROUS    ATTITUDE    IN    SOCIAL    WORK      1 75 

Mr.  Baker  was  president  of  the  National  Consumers' 
League;  but  the  fact  that  he  took  such  a  stand  cannot 
fail  of  effect  through  the  country  at  large.  It  has  set  the 
broad  official  seal  of  disapproval  upon  sweated  industry. 

IV 

The  prophet  now  approaches  a  little  closer  the  problems 
of  the  future  as  they  concern  more  intimately  the  social 
worker.  What,  for  instance,  is  there  in  store  for  organ- 
ized criticism  and  pubHcity?  This  question  is  pertinent 
for  at  least  two  reasons.  First,  because  so  much  social 
work  is  the  result  of  organized  investigation  and  public- 
ity focused  upon  social  disabilities  which  need  Hghten- 
ing  or  removal;  and  second,  because  many  social  workers 
are  regularly  employed  in  such  publicity.  We  recognize 
that  government  in  war  time  is  to  a  considerable  extent  a 
repressive  machine.  War  necessitates  a  good  deal  of 
apparently  arbitrary  action  in  the  interest  of  securing 
that  social  coherence  without  which  vigorous  and  suc- 
cessful prosecution  of  a  war  seems  impossible.  But  does 
that  mean  we  shall  become  habituated  to  censorship  and 
the  crushing  of  freedom  of  speech,  assemblage,  and  our 
other  ancient  rights  guaranteed  by  constitutions  and  stat- 
utes? Remember  that  constitutions  can  never  guaran- 
tee absolute  rights.  They  rather  state  desirable  ideals,  as 
we  have  demonstrated  in  the  analysis  of  "natural  rights." 
I,  for  one,  have  no  fear  but  that  after  the  spasm  of  war 
hysteria  is  over,  we  shall  resume  our  feast  of  "  pitiless 
publicity,"  and  the  courts  will  begin  to  reverse  the 
acts  of  scared  legislatures  and  executives,^  and  this  even 

1  A  significant  example  has  occurred  in  Minnesota.  The  State 
Supreme  Court  reversed  an  order  of  the  governor  who  had  removed 
from  office  a  county  probate  judge  on  grounds  of  opposing  the  war 
poHcy  of  the  United  States.  The  court  held  that  elected  pubhc 
officials  can  be  removed  only  for  malfeasance  and  not  for  acts  and 
conduct  having  no  relation  or  connection  with  performance  of 


176         THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

while  fully  recognizing  the  possible  attempt  to  fasten 
upon  us  the  habit  of  accepting  "treated"  news  or  pre- 
pared or  safe  or  ofi&cial  news  as  a  method  of  quenching 
liberal  inquiry  and  propaganda.  Meanwhile,  it  is  quite 
remarkable  how  much  has  been  achieved  in  the  last  three 
years  by  the  Federal  Children's  Bureau  and  the  Bureau 
of  Labor  Statistics.  For  example,  three  monumental 
studies  of  infant  mortality  in  relation  to  income  have 
been  made  by  the  Children's  Bureau  within  this  period. 
If  there  is  any  tendency  to  suppress  legitimate  social  in- 
vestigation these  studies  would  long  ago  have  been 
crushed  to  the  ground,  because  they  are  brimful  of  con- 
firmation for  the  demands  of  those  dangerous  incendia- 
ries who  have  been  urging  national  minima !  In  all  prob- 
ability these  bureaus  will  go  on  increasing  their  value 
and  significance  as  research  and  publicity  agencies.  Is  it 
not  possible  that  in  addition  to  them  the  enormous  pub- 
licity work  of  the  surgeon  general's  office  and  the  federal 
board  for  vocational  education  will  continue?  Is  it  pos- 
sible or  desirable,  further,  that  we  should  have  a  govern- 
ment intelligence  bureau  for  the  purpose  of  giving  out 
facts,  political,  economic,  social,  international,  like 
weather  or  crop  reports  or  the  monthly  review  of  the 
Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics?  I  can  see  great  danger  in 
issuing  a  special  periodical  apologetic  for  the  government. 
It  might  easily  become  the  agency  for  Junkerdom  and  bu- 

oflScial  duty.  "  Scolding  the  President  of  the  United  States,  par- 
ticularly at  long  range,"  remarks  the  court,  "condemning  in  a 
strong  voice  the  war  policy  of  the  federal  authorities,  expressing 
sympathy  with  Germany,  justifying  the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania, 
by  remarks  made  by  a  public  officer  of  the  jurisdiction  and  limited 
authority  possessed  by  a  judge  of  probate  under  the  constitution 
and  laws  of  this  state  do  not  constitute  malfeasance  in  the  dis- 
charge of  official  duties  and  therefore  furnish  no  legal  ground  for  re- 
moval." Wholesome  doctrine,  however  much  we  deplore  the  lack 
of  real  perception  and  patriotism  in  the  officer  in  question,  and 
much  easier  to  hand  down  after  the  actual  close  of  hostilities. 


THE    ADVENTUROUS    ATTITUDE    IN    SOCIAL   WORK      1 77 

reaucracy.  On  the  other  hand,  for  the  proper  creation 
of  public  opinion,  it  is  fundamental  that  somehow  or 
other  we  get  plain,  unvarnished,  uncolored  statements 
of  fact  such  as  the  commercialized  public  press  cannot  or 
does  not  furnish  us  now.  We  are  almost  reduced  to  the 
necessity  of  choosing  between  foundations  for  news  dis- 
tribution or  government  bureaus. 

In  the  field  of  control  and  administration  of  philan- 
thropy the  plow  of  new  opinion  is  driving  deep  furrows. 
Just  as  the  Civil  War  gave  an  impetus  to  state  central- 
ized care  of  dependents,  defectives,  and  delinquents, 
so  the  recent  war  has  promoted  federalized  as  well  as 
state  interest  in  these  matters.  The  problems  of  the 
draft,  of  demobilization,  of  insurance  are  reenforcing  the 
trend  toward  public  and  away  from  private  relief  sys- 
tems. Moreover,  financial  pressure  may  act  as  the  se- 
lective force  against  weaker  and  less  efficient  social  agen- 
cies, particularly,  may  it  be  hoped,  against  those  which 
are  dead-centered  and  which  have  been  merely  living 
upon  their  laurels. 

The  huge  proportions  of  the  war  problem  have  been 
reflected  in  the  reorganization  of  great  welfare  agencies 
upon  a  similar  huge  pattern.  The  Red  Cross  is  now  the 
greatest  corporation  in  the  world.  Business  men  wel- 
come it  as  an  admission  of  the  value  of  big  business  meth- 
ods. Many  of  them  would  extend  the  principle  of  local 
charity  indorsement  to  a  national  scale  and  would  make 
the  Red  Cross  or  some  other  equally  big  agency  the  li- 
censer of  all  philanthropies,  war  or  peace.  Does  this 
mean  at  last  the  trustification  of  philanthropy?  One  of 
my  friends  writes  asking:  ''Should  the  home  service  of 
the  Red  Cross,  now  organized  on  a  national  basis,  be  de- 
veloped and  intensified  so  that  it  would  be  practically  tak- 
ing the  place  of  local  organized  charity  and  local  public 
outdoor  relief?  "  The  fear  implicit  in  this  letter  is  rather 
widespread.  I  doubt,  however,  if  it  will  be  realized. 
While  the  new  movement  cannot  fail  to  affect  pro- 


178         THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

foundly  local  relief  agencies  and  their  methods,  and  while 
local  agencies  may  appreciate  whatever  financial  stim- 
ulus or  direct  grants  may  come  from  the  big  war  agen- 
cies, they  are  not  ready  yet  to  surrender  their  private  in- 
terests and  prerogatives. 

From  the  standpoint  of  the  individual  social  worker 
who  has  taken  service  during  the  war  with  one  of  these  big 
agencies,  a  somewhat  tangled  prospect  appears.  For  ex- 
ample, the  prestige  of  the  Red  Cross  makes  the  social 
worker's  problem  much  easier.  It  greases  the  skids  for 
workers  and  is  the  open  sesame  to  many  doors  which  it  is 
difficult  for  ordinary  charity  organization  society  work- 
ers to  open.  Lawyers,  doctors,  dentists,  undertakers,  all 
give  liberally  of  their  time,  much  of  it  absolutely  free, 
and  hospitals  take  Red  Cross  cases  on  a  fifty-fifty  basis. 
Both  professional  and  volunteer  workers  may  trade  on 
this  prestige  during  war  time  or  they  may  get  an  undue 
idea  of  the  ease  with  which  their  problems  clear  up.  All 
of  this  means  that  when  they  get  back  to  their  regular 
offices  with  all  the  old  problems  of  finance  and  hostile 
criticism  they  are  likely  to  suffer  the  psychology  of  shell 
shock  and  feel  a  sense  of  futility  and  depression.  But  on 
the  other  hand,  it  is  altogether  possible — is  it  not? — that 
some  of  this  great  war  program  of  social  work  will  have 
so  familiarized  people  with  social  work  under  the  magi- 
cal name  of  Red  Cross  or  rehabilitating  the  disabled  sol- 
dier that  it  may  carry  over  into  peace  times  and  help 
allay  some  suspicions  and  prejudices  against  organized 
social  work.  While  I  do  not  look  for  any  immediate  na- 
tional organization  even  of  home-service  work  in  the 
Red  Cross  upon  the  same  extensive  and  intensive  plan 
which  rules  at  present,  there  is  a  strong  probability  that 
this  magnificent  war  organization  will  not  be  allowed  to 
go  to  pieces  and  rust  in  times  of  peace,  but  that  it  will 
be  maintained  and  applied  to  some  specific  field  of  social 
work  such,  for  example,  as  public  health. 

The  financial  aspect  of  this  problem  while  not  domi- 


THE    ADVENTUROUS    ATTITUDE    IN    SOCIAL    WORK      1 79 

nant,  perhaps,  is  none  the  less  extremely  attractive  to 
the  prophet.  The  Red  Cross  has  taught  us  many  things 
about  charitable  publicity  and  finance,  and  these  lessons 
are  sure  to  carry  over  into  peace  times  even  though  it  may 
not  continue  as  a  partner  on  a  half  and  half  basis  with 
local  relief  agencies.  The  war  has  pruned  the  support 
of  some  agencies,  has  swelled  the  finances  of  others,  has 
scared  some  givers,  is  inspiring  others.  But  the  net  result 
is  that  giving  is  more  universal  and  more  democratic  than 
ever  before.  The  habit  of  giving  like  that  of  insurance  has 
been  formed  by  thousands  who  never  thought  it  possible 
heretofore.  The  business  of  thrift  goes  hand  in  hand  with 
that  of  benevolence  and  reaches  down  even  into  the  ele- 
mentary school.  In  a  Red  Cross  membership  campaign 
at  Christmas,  I  called  at  a  house  where  a  little  girl 
danced  up  and  down  as  she  threw  open  the  door.  She 
had  been  watchmg  the  team  of  solicitors  from  her  win- 
dow and  was  frightened  at  the  thought  that  perhaps  we 
might  pass  her  house  by.  She  had  learned  at  school 
about  the  Red  Cross  and  had  acted  as  a  missionary  in 
her  neighborhood.  When  even  the  children  of  the  street 
are  thrSled  by  the  prospect  of  giving,  it  is  not  crazy  opti- 
mism to  believe  that  a  new  sense  of  service  may  be  in 
process  of  formation  for  the  coming  generation. 

Unless  all  signs  fail,  philanthropic  finance  for  the  next 
generation  will  be  adventurous  finance.  Social  workers 
may  not  have  to  beg  for  every  penny  they  need  to  spend 
upon  preventive  programs.  The  war  has  taught  us  that 
the  day  of  miracles  is  not  over.  It  has  also  taught  us  the 
value  of  the  experimental  method  even  though  that  ex- 
periment involves  tremendous  financial  outlay.  Norman 
Angell  observed  a  while  ago  that  the  conviction  that  gov- 
ernmental action  can  make  economic  adjustments^  of 
much  wider  scope  than  was  supposed  and  the  conviction 
of  its  moral  justification  are  to  focus  upon  a  third  phenom- 
enon; namely,  the  determination  in  the  future  to  be  ad- 
venturous and  experimental  in  social  reform.    Says  he: 


l8o         THE  SCIENTIFIC  SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

"When  the  English  '  maximalist'  is  told,  as  of  course  the 
economists  will  tell  him,  that  his  programs  will  fail,  his 
relation  to  some  years  of  war  experience  prompts  him  to 
take  the  Une:  '  Suppose  it  does  fail,  and  we  have  to  try 
something  else?  Will  it  cost  ten  million  lives,  the  youth 
of  a  whole  generation,  like  the  war? '  He  has  seen  cer- 
tain military  enterprises  utterly  fail,  enterprises  which 
he  knew  were  considered  gambles  by  those  who  ordered 
them,  and  which  in  fact  were  afterwards  condemned 
officially  as  errors.  Yet  those  who,  in  the  circumstances, 
perhaps  rightly,  ordered  those  gambles  knew  they  would 
cost  dreadful  suffering,  unimaginable  horrors,  innumer- 
able lives.  When  therefore  he  is  told  that  his  industrial 
experiment  will  disturb  credit  and  upset  trade,  he  will 
be  quite  unimpressed.  He  will  certainly  take  the  risk. 
He  will  introduce  a  little  of  the  strenuousness  and  ad- 
venture of  war  into  the  life  of  peace,  and  make  it  a  little 
less  '  soft  and  slothful.'" 

For  the  financing  of  these  adventures  in  social  reform, 
surely  the  income  tax  will  be  retained  and  extended;  and 
new  forms  of  taxation  will  probably  be  found,  partic- 
ularly on  marginal  businesses  such  as  child-labor  indus- 
tries and  on  excess  profits.  Moreover,  disarmament  or 
limitation  of  armament  is  likely  if  sane  counsels  prevail 
in  peace  negotiations  and  after.  This  will  mean  not  only 
the  releasing  of  vast  energies  for  the  production  of  food, 
clothing,  shelter,  education,  and  other  preventives  of  so- 
cial misery  but  also  the  enlisting  of  huge  sums  of  cap- 
ital and  income  for  funding  social  amelioration  and  pro- 
gressive experimentation. 

For  a  while  it  looked  as  though  the  principle  of  the 
financial  federation  would  receive  a  strong  reenf orcement 
by  war  finance  and  for  a  few  weeks  the  war-chest  fad 
threatened  to  sweep  the  country.  However,  the  brakes 
were  suddenly  thrown  on  by  the  very  agencies  such  as 
the  Red  Cross  and  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  from  which  the  im- 
pulse was  supposed  to  have  been  derived.     Notwith- 


THE    ADVENTUROUS    ATTITUDE    IN    SOCIAL   WORK      l8l 

standing  the  fact  that  these  mighty  agencies  had  to  bow 
before  public  persuasion  and  cast  in  their  lot  with  lesser 
national  and  local  agencies  in  the  war-chest  drives,  or 
that  these  drives  have  been  uniformly  successful  in  two 
hundred  cities,  it  is  quite  evident  that  financial  federa- 
tions are  not  going  to  sweep  all  before  them  in  an  easy 
conquest.  If  they  do  succeed  in  conquering  the  coun- 
try it  will  not  be  through  steam-roller  invasion  but  by 
nibbling  trench  warfare.  Meanwhile,  nearly  two  score 
cities  have  definitely  undertaken  to  transform  their  war 
chests  into  community  chests  for  financing  local  welfare 
agencies. 


For  carr>dng  through  this  work  of  adventurous  social 
reform  there  is  no  question  but  that  there  will  be  an  in- 
creasing demand  for  trained  social  experts.  Social  work 
is  recognized  as  never  before  by  the  national  govenmient 
and  by  hundreds  of  business  and  professional  men  as  the 
result  of  various  "drives"  and  actual  personal  service. 
Therefore,  as  never  before,  there  is  laid  upon  all  social 
workers  the  responsibility  for  justifying  the  faith  placed 
in  them.  In  carrying  out  the  broadened  community  proj- 
ects incident  to  war,  to  demobilization  and  to  recon- 
struction thereafter,  more  social  workers  than  ever  will 
be  needed.  The  training  schools  for  social  work  register 
this  increased  pressure  of  demand,  for  their  classes  are 
larger  than  ever.  This  is  not  only  a  question  of  the  pro- 
fessional but  also  of  the  volunteer.  The  Red  Cross  has 
been  spreading  ideas  of  skilled  social  work  in  more  than 
three  thousand  communities,  issuing  pamphlets  on  social 
work  in  editions  of  one  hundred  thousand  and  more,  and 
training  through  its  home  service  institutes  hundreds  of 
volunteers  many  of  whom  will  or  should  want  to  go  fur- 
ther into  real  professional  work.  Churches,  too,  are 
learning  the  value  of  training  and  organization  in  social 
work. 


l82         THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

Two  special  problems  crop  out  of  these  facts ;  namely, 
how  to  retain  these  trained  volunteers  after  the  war  mo- 
tive subsides,  and  what  will  be  the  effect  of  war  work  and 
volunteer  service  upon  accepted  standards  of  social  tech- 
nique. In  answer  to  the  first  of  these  questions,  I  should 
say  that  there  are  four  future  uses  for  the  volunteers. 
They  may  be  used  as  territorials  somewhat  like  the  Red 
Cross  nurses,  subject  to  emergency  call  in  times  of  dis- 
aster. They  may  be  used  in  the  new  pubhc  relief  as 
that  system  approaches,  as  institution  visitors,  as  mem- 
bers of  county  boards  of  child  welfare,  volunteer  pro- 
bation officers,  parole  officers,  mothers'  pension  inves- 
tigators. They  may  be  used  for  school  and  child-welfare 
work  as  leaders  of  more  effective  parent  and  teachers' 
associations  and  the  W.ie,  and  as  supporters  of  both  pub- 
Uc  and  private  agencies  doing  such  work.  They  may  be 
used  also  as  radiating  centers  for  social  publicity  in  ex- 
tending the  ideas  of  social  work  into  outlying  districts, 
the  small  towns,  villages,  and  open  country,  and  as  local 
correspondents  for  the  creation  of  public  opinion  which 
may  be  brought  to  bear  upon  legislators  when  questions 
of  social-welfare  policy  arise. 

In  answer  to  the  second  question  it  may  be  said  that 
there  is  no  necessary  reason  why  war  work  should  relax 
the  standards  of  sound  social  technique.  There  is,  of 
course,  some  practical  danger  that  sentimentality  and  the 
fear  of  public  criticism  may  provoke  unwise  open-handed- 
ness  and  mere  good-natured  contacts  instead  of  scientific 
social  work.  This  means  some  danger  of  pauperiza- 
tion and  insistence  upon  the  right  to  relief.  The  main- 
tenance of  the  insurance  attitude  as  the  guiding  thought 
particularly  in  Red  Cross  home-service  work  means  that 
these  dangers  are  minimized;  hence  this  wide  extension  of 
war-relief  work  by  utilizing  trained  social  workers  may 
even  bring  about  a  material  reduction  of  the  dependent 
attitude  which  would  easily  grow  up  under  the  patronage 
of  thousands  of  little  unorganized  sentimental  agencies. 


THE    ADVENTUROUS    ATTITUDE    IN    SOCIAL   WORK      1 83 

Neither  is  there  any  apparent  special  danger  of  diluting 
social  work  as  a  profession  with  half-trained  volunteers, 
providing  these  volunteers  fully  realize  that  they  are  only 
half  trained  and  do  not  misuse  their  opportunity  to  learn. 
It  is  best  to  safeguard  both  the  volunteers  and  their 
clients  by  insisting  that  while,  for  example,  Red  Cross 
home-service  work  is  essentially  insurance  work  of  the 
complementary  type,  no  insurance  plan  however  well  de- 
vised can  soften  every  vicissitude  nor  can  it  work  without 
the  wholehearted  cooperation  of  the  insured. 

War  work  may  actually  have  improved  technique  by 
jarring  workers  out  of  their  routine,  by  changing  workers 
to  new  jobs  and  new  types  of  work,  by  eliminating  what- 
ever of  condescension  or  mere  detective  methods  still 
lingered  on  in  organized  relief,  by  broadening  scope  and 
vision  through  contact  with  bankers  and  manufacturers 
and  soldiers  and  professors,  by  experiences  in  Europe 
with  great  creative  plans  for  rebuilding  towns,  rehabil- 
itating refugees,  reclaiming  war  cripples,  etc.,  by  inter- 
national exchange  of  successful  methods  or  bitter  fail- 
ures, by  dint  of  having  to  meet  larger  intakes  of  cases 
and  problems  with  straightened  financial  support. 

VI 

I  have  already  hinted  that  we  have  moved  forward 
with  seven-leagued  boots  in  our  conception  of  the  value 
of  organized  community  recreation  in  promoting  physi- 
cal and  mental  efficiency  and  in  maintaining  mihtary  mo- 
rale. The  Y.  M.  C.  A.  may  be  counted  on  not  to  lose  the 
momentum  it  has  achieved  but  to  maintain  it  through  its 
wonderful  organization.  Likewise,  the  Playground  and 
Recreation  Association  of  America  has  secured  through 
its  War  Camp  Community  Service  a  new  following  and 
a  new  prestige.  If  its  soldiers'  and  sailors'  clubhouses 
and  hang-outs  are  not  maintained  permanently  it  will 
be  because  other  and  more  strategically  located  centers 


184         THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

have  been  provided  to  carry  out  the  identical  principle 
of  looking  after  the  welfare  of  single  men  enlisted  in  sea- 
sonal industry. 

Perhaps  we  shall  not  need  recreational  substitutes  for 
saloons  or  brothels,  but  I  believe  we  shall;  for  the  play  in- 
stinct and  the  sex  instinct  are  imperious  and  if  balked  of 
innocent  and  legitimate  expression  will  find  their  satis- 
factions by  devious  channels.  Perhaps  I  ought  to  use 
the  new  term  "sublimation"  instead  of  substitution,  be- 
cause that  term  signifies  not  only  substitution  but  also 
transformation  and  development  of  an  impulse.  It 
should  be  possible  in  this  process  of  sublimation  through 
recreation  to  stimulate  creative  art  expression  in  the  mas- 
ses of  American  manhood.  This  possibility  is  rendered  all 
the  more  likely  because  of  the  new  artistic  horizons 
which  were  opened  to  our  men  in  France:  for  going 
across  the  seas  meant  not  only  rewriting  the  history  and 
geography  which  they  learned  in  their  elementary  school 
days;  it  meant  also  bringing  these  men  into  contact  with 
two  thousand  years  of  artistic  development  in  a  coun- 
try particularly  sensitive  and  particularly  fertile  in  the 
field  of  art. 

Let  the  Long  Faces  shake  their  gloomy  heads  and  cry 
this  is  no  time  for  play,  war  and  reconstruction  are  se- 
rious work,  business  is  man's  chief  end  and  good,  put 
away  childish  things.  In  the  end  we  shall  learn  that  de- 
mocracy demands  for  its  success  two  things:  not  the 
bread  and  circuses  of  the  cynic,  but  a  certain  amount  of 
material  prosperity  and  leisure,  leisure  for  thought  and 
for  play,  and  prosperity  wherewith  to  pay  the  piper. 

The  problem  of  educational  reconstruction  is  of  vital 
concern  to  social  workers  because  of  our  increased  faith 
in  technical  or  vocational  education  as  a  partial  remedy 
for  individual  and  social  unpreparedness.  There  is  also 
a  new  faith  in  the  possibility  of  reclaiming  and  utilizing 
"human  scrap"  through  education,  the  reeducation  of 
the  war-disabled,  of  the  work-shy,  of  the  industrial  mis- 


THE    ADVENTUROUS    ATTITUDE    IN    SOCIAL   WORK      185 

fits.  The  minority  report  of  the  Royal  Commission  on 
the  Poor  Laws  pointed  out  these  possibilities  to  us  at 
least  ten  years  ago,  but  it  took  the  catastrophe  of  war  to 
force  upon  us  the  magnificent  concept  which  that  report 
contained.  Hence  I  look  for  a  very  wide  extension  of  vo- 
cational training,  of  continuation  schools,  of  physical 
education,  and  instruction  in  social  hygiene.^  I  antici- 
pate also  an  extension  of  school  and  home  visitors,  the 
all-year  use  of  school  plants,  of  vocational  guidance,^  of 
social-center  utilization  of  school  plants  for  continuation 
school  work,  and  the  like. 

We  shall  probably  witness  also  an  extension  of  the 
period  of  compulsory  schooling  in  some  form  or  other  to 
the  age  of  eighteen  or  beyond,  just  as  we  see  the  age  of 
consent  and  the  Juvenile  Court  age  rising.  I  am  not  sure 
but  that  we  may  see  some  form  of  universal  community 
service  exacted  of  all  youths  as  the  climax  to  their  educa- 
tion, either  as  a  tribute  to  the  vision  of  the  psychologists 
who,  like  William  James,  have  been  looking  for  moral 
equivalents  of  military  training  for  service,  or  to  the 
theories  of  the  constructive  sociologists  who  aim  at  creat- 
ing contributive  types  of  personality,  or  even  as  a  com- 
promise with  the  propagandists  for  universal  military 
service.  I  should  not  be  surprised  to  see  a  new  emphasis 
and  a  new  direction  given  to  manual  training  by  pro- 
vidmg  it  with  some  real  point  such,  for  example,  as  has 
been  offered  by  the  Junior  Red  Cross  manual.  Sloyd 
work  and  other  forms  of  manual  crafts  take  on  a  new 
meaning  when  they  are  done  under  some  strong  impulse 
like  war,  for  the  saving  of  life  or  for  conserving  health 
and  man  power. 

If  there  is  any  doubt  as  to  the  connection  between  the 
new  educational  work,  the  war,  and  social  work,  let  it  be 
dispersed  immediately  in  the  light  of  the  humiliating 
discovery  of  seven  hundred  thousand  men  of  draft  age 
who  could  neither  read  nor  write  and  of  the  still  more 
humiliating  discovery  that  there  are  over  five  and  a  half 


1 86        THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

million  illiterates  over  the  age  of  ten  in  this  America  of 
ours,  this  leader  of  democracy.  Social  workers  will  ren- 
der a  notable  service  to  the  country  by  backing  up  Sec- 
retary Lane's  proposal  to  President  Wilson  for  a  bill  to 
end  America's  illiteracy,  or  even  perhaps  by  going  a  step 
further  with  the  creation  of  a  really  active  United  States 
department  of  education  which  could  correlate  and  de- 
velop the  various  educational  services  on  behalf  of  the  ne- 
gro, the  immigrant,  the  rural  child,  and  other  forgotten 
armies  in  our  midst. 

Among  other  significant  straws,  we  must  not  over- 
look the  health  problem.  In  general  it  is  safe  to  forecast 
a  much  more  intense  activity  for  health  conservation, 
also  a  keener  perception  of  the  significance  of  infant  mor- 
tality and  protected  maternity.  The  challenge  of  tuber- 
culosis in  France  and  the  experiences  of  trench  life  will 
recall  attention  to  the  problem  of  causative  factors  of 
tuberculosis  in  both  town  and  country.  Likewise  the 
emergency  call  for  war  housing  has  forced  upon  the  gov- 
ernments of  all  the  warring  nations  some  attention  to  de- 
cent housing  as  a  factor  in  health  and  productivity.  Fur- 
thermore we  are  witnessing  an  increased  attention  to 
mental  hygiene  as  a  health  consideration.  This  fact  was 
iterated  and  reiterated  day  after  day  at  the  National 
Conference  of  Social  Work  in  Kansas  City,  1918.^  It  re- 
sounded through  the  Conference  on  Demobilization  and 
in  the  meetings  of  American  public  health  officials  dur- 
ing the  winter  of  19 18.  The  developing  of  psychiatric 
social  work  on  behalf  of  the  war-disabled  is  further  evi- 
dence of  the  disposition  of  the  government  and  social 
workers  to  take  the  necessary  forward  steps  in  this  field  of 
mental  hygiene.^ 

I  have  already  spoken  of  the  probable  effects  of  the 

1  Particularly  noteworthy  and  commendable  are  the  mono- 
graphs and  reports  on  neuropsychiatry  issued  by  the  National 
Committee  for  Mental  Hygiene. 


THE    ADVENTUROUS    ATTITUDE    IN    SOCIAL    WORK      1 87 

great  coordinating  plan  between  the  United  States  Gov- 
ernment, the  Red  Cross,  and  other  agencies  for  the  rec- 
lamation of  "human  scrap,"  but  what  will  happen  when 
the  jingoists  and  propagandists  for  universal  military 
service  run  up  against  the  fact  of  physical  defects  in  the 
young  man  drafted  for  military  service?  An  incredible 
number,  for  example,  of  rural  young  men  were  rejected 
by  the  military  examiners.  This  fact  should  shock  the 
country  out  of  its  dream  of  ideal  health  conditions  auto- 
matically prevalent  on  the  farms.  The  fact  is  that  most 
of  this  physical  degeneration  results  from  defective  so- 
cial environments,  as  was  proved  by  the  great  British 
Interdepartmental  Report  on  Physical  Degeneration 
pubHshed  ten  years  ago  as  the  aftermath  of  the  Boer  War. 
Certain  of  the  standpat  newspapers  have  been  printing 
editorials  glorifying  universal  military  service  as  the  cure 
for  physical  defects.  I  quote  from  one  of  the  most  ram- 
pant of  these  journals: 

"On  the  score  of  health  alone  military  training  stands  approved 
in  every  unbiased  mind.  What  it  will  do  in  a  few  months  to  remake 
and  upbuild  young  men  physically  is  now  a  matter  of  demonstrated 
fact  in  every  camp  in  the  land.  The  change  from  weakness  to 
strength,  from  the  slouch  to  the  upstanding  poise,  from  sallowness 
to  ruddiness,  from  laggard  to  jubilant  feet,  from  lusterless  to  clear 
eyes — it  is  a  transformation  to  marvel  at  and  to  delight  in.  It 
means  a  better  store  of  energy  to  apply  during  a  lifetime  to  the 
tasks  of  farm,  factory,  office,  and  shop.  It  will  make  democracy 
more  efi&cient,  life  sweeter,  men  happier,  posterity  sturdier." 

It  is  perfect  nonsense  to  assume  that  even  the  United 
States  Army  can  make  silken  purses  out  of  sows'  ears. 
No  military  man  would  attempt  to  produce  a  good  soldier 
out  of  a  rotten  body  and  a  weakened  mind.  The  army 
wants  men  potentially  fit.  The  remedy  for  physical  de- 
generation, then,  is  not  universal  military  service  but  a 
broad  constructive  program  of  community  health,  food, 
recreation,  housing,  and  all  of  the  other  factors  which 


l88         THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

make  for  physical  soundness,  mental  poise,  and  social 
wholesomeness.  One  is  not  surprised  to  find  that  from 
the  British  report  may  be  gathered  abundant  testimony 
by  military  men  confirming  just  these  contentions  of  the 
pubUc-health  workers  and  the  social  reformers.  True 
preparedness  must  begin  one  lap  at  least  ahead  of  mili- 
tary service.  The  army  and  navy  should  not  be  expected 
to  cumber  themselves  with  the  job  of  repairing  the  social 
neglect  of  both  city  and  country  the  nation  over. 

It  is  very  evident  that  the  program  of  social-hygiene 
education,  of  repressive  measures,  and  of  clinical  treat- 
ment of  venereal  disease  will  carry  over  into  peace  times. 
The  taboo  on  discussion  of  this  subject  has  been  pried  off. 
The  conspiracy  of  silence  is  broken.  Sex  disease  is  no 
longer  a  private  weakness  or  folly  but  a  grave  public 
concern.  Much  of  whatever  reticence  and  secrecy  still 
remain  may  be  overcome  by  properly  dividing  the  prob- 
lem into  its  two  phases  of  physical  heaUng  and  moral 
regeneration.  The  diverse  agencies  which  are  working 
on  these  two  aspects  of  the  problem  now;  namely,  the 
government,  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  the  American  Bureau  of 
Social  Hygiene,  state  boards  of  health,  and  certain  pri- 
vate societies  will  scarcely  rehnquish  their  undertakings 
or  scrap  their  organizations  when  the  particular  war 
emergency  is  passed.  When  the  communities  fully  realize 
that  it  has  been  actually  far  safer  for  a  young  man  to 
be  in  and  about  one  of  the  training  camps  or  posts  of  the 
United  States  Army  than  to  walk  the  streets  of  the  aver- 
age American  town,  they  will  hardly  fail  to  cormect  cause 
and  effect  and  to  recognize  that  the  preventive  and  cura- 
tive measures  adopted  to  maintain  miUtary  morale  are 
equally  valuable  as  pubUc-health  measures  in  times  of 
peace.  The  proposal  by  the  government  to  create  an 
interdepartment  bureau  of  social  hygiene  with  large 
appropriations  for  community  research  indicates  that 
so  far  as  the  pubUc  authorities  are  concerned  at  least, 
there  is  a  firm  resolution  to  make  this  work  an  integral 


THE    ADVENTUROUS    ATTITUDE    IN    SOCIAL    WORK      1 89 

part  of  public  policy  hereafter.  Finally,  as  I  have  al- 
ready suggested,  there  is  a  possibility  that  the  Red  Cross 
might  become  a  great  health  promoting  agency  partic- 
ularly through  its  civilian  relief  department  after  its 
war  work  is  done.  There  will  be  no  danger  in  such  an 
adaptation  of  Red  Cross  machinery  if  it  is  not  tied  up  to 
some  special  medical  interest  and  if  it  is  made  a  genuine 
public-health  agency  for  the  furtherance  of  preventive 
sanitation  both  rural  and  city. 

In  all  probability  the  whole  immigration  question  will 
take  on  new  coloring  as  the  result  of  war's  ravages  in 
Europe  and  of  our  new  rapprochements  with  our  alHes. 
It  is  quite  to  be  expected  that  some  measure  of  discrim- 
ination in  hospitality  will  be  extended  to  prospective  mi- 
grants from  Europe.  Whether  any  very  definite  boycott 
against  immigration  from  present  alien  enemy  nations 
will  be  consummated  along  with  some  form  of  economic 
boycott  cannot  at  present  be  predicted.  But  there  is 
good  reason  for  believing  that  many  European  countries 
will  not  only  not  encourage  emigration  but  will  prob- 
ably take  definite  steps  by  attractive  measures  to  per- 
suade intending  emigrants  to  stay  at  home.  The  rebuild- 
ing of  European  economic  life  will  probably  claim  most 
of  the  able-bodied  men  heretofore  constituting  the  bird- 
of-passage  type  of  emigrant.  At  home  we  are  faced 
with  a  vigorous  determination  to  translate  into  fact  our 
pious  wishes  about  peaceful  or  attractive  assimilation 
of  the  foreign  born  in  our  midst.  This  does  not  mean 
ruthless  Americanization,  nor  coercive  methods  such  as 
have  characterized  either  Prussia  or  Russia  in  their  deal- 
ings with  Alsace  or  Schleswig-Holstein  or  Ruthenia.  It 
does  mean  opening  up  immigrant  pools  through  settling 
the  "language  question"  and  through  requiring  that 
fundamental  instruction  in  both  private  and  public 
schools  shall  be  in  English.  It  also  means  utilizing  set- 
tlements, social  centers,  night  schools,  continuation 
schools,   and   other  agencies  for  citizenship.     Already 


IQO         THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

through  legislation  and  through  community  organization 
this  work  of  Americanization  is  being  undertaken.  The 
foreign-language  school  which  under  the  guise  of  relig- 
ious liberty  or  through  a  too  unsuspecting  tolerance  had 
become  a  center  of  anti-American  propaganda,  is  now 
upon  the  operating  table.  State  councils  of  defense 
and  state  legislatures  are  being  called  upon  to  settle  this 
question  and  to  insure  that  every  person  in  this  country 
shall  have  ready  access  through  the  common  language 
to  all  the  cultural  inheritance  which  America  has  to  offer. 

Incidentally  this  new  emphasis  upon  education  will 
almost  necessarily  mean  strengthening  the  movement 
for  a  reasonable  working  day  which  would  admit  of  a 
certain  amount  of  leisure  for  education.  Sheer  physical 
fatigue  as  a  result  of  a  long  working  day  has  been  the 
ally  of  deliberate  foreign  propaganda  in  preventing  the 
assimilation  of  thousands  of  well-meaning  immigrants. 
Neither  should  we  overlook  the  significance  of  the  negro 
migration  northward.  This  new  contact  of  the  negro 
with  the  North,  his  new  taste  of  free  movement,  and  his 
coservice  in  the  armies  of  the  republic  will  change  and 
are  already  changing  the  attitude  of  the  South.  They 
will  also  create  many  new  problems  of  housing,  health, 
unemployment,  and  illegitimacy  in  our  northern  com- 
munities. This  must  mean  not  only  a  broad  policy  on 
the  part  of  the  communities  where  the  negroes  locate, 
but  also  the  developing  of  a  much  larger  corps  of  profes- 
sionally trained  negro  social  workers  to  mediate  between 
the  newcomers  and  their  neighbors  and  to  help  in  the 
process  of  adjustment. 

Would  it  be  too  much  of  a  strain  upon  our  imagination 
to  forecast,  as  the  result  of  military  training  of  millions  of 
young  men  of  impressionable  years  and  as  the  result  also 
of  war-time  measures  in  food  conservation,  price  fixing 
and  health  work,  a  new  respect  for  law?  Citizens  are 
learning  not  merely  to  tolerate  the  law  but  to  cooperate 
in  administering  the  law;  for  instance,  with  regard  to 


THE    ADVENTUROUS    ATTITUDE    IN    SOCIAL    WORK      IQI 

espionage,  treason,  and  prostitution.  But  that  we  have 
a  long  way  to  go  and  that  the  millennium  is  hardly  yet 
within  hail  is  indicated  by  the  prevalence  still  of  lynch- 
ing and  mob  violence.  The  terrorism  of  the  mob  is  just 
as  bad  as  Junker  autocracy  whether  it  is  a  question  of 
burning  a  negro  in  Georgia  or  lynching  an  Illinois  miner 
with  a  German  name,  or  hustling  out  of  town  a  speaker 
ready  for  an  address  in  defense  of  Tom  Mooney  in  Cal- 
ifornia, or  of  deporting  I.  W.  W.'s  from  Bisbee.  The 
fact,  that  taking  the  country  as  a  whole,  the  prison  and 
reformatory  population  shows  a  marked  reduction  is  not 
necessarily  attributable  to  any  gain  in  respect  for  law, 
but  probably  rather  to  miHtary  enlistment  of  the  adven- 
urous  and  of  a  large  number  of  casual  workers,  and  also 
to  the  control  of  the  sale  of  liquor.  At  the  same  time 
there  is  much  of  suggestion  in  this  fact  to  point  the  way 
for  social  policy  in  reducing  the  rate  of  crime  with  the  re- 
turn of  peace.  So  far  as  can  be  seen  now,  it  is  going  to 
take  much  more  than  a  world  war  to  improve  very  much 
our  present  system  of  criminal  procedure.  Perhaps  the 
new  contact  of  America  with  English  and  continental 
criminal  law  will  mean  spreading  much  more  generally 
the  demand  for  improvement  which  has  heretofore  been 
sounded  only  by  a  few  leaders  of  the  bar  like  ex-Presi- 
dent Taft  and  Elihu  Root. 

The  new  stirrings  in  the  woman's  movement  is  also  a 
significant  mark  of  the  trend  of  the  times.  Women's 
economic  services  in  the  war  have  become  what  Mr.  As- 
quith  called  the  "unanswerable  argument"  for  the  ex- 
tension of  suffrage.  With  the  settlement  of  the  suffrage 
issue,  an  enormous  store  of  energy  will  be  released  from 
suffrage  propaganda  to  other  constructive  social  efforts. 
The  education  incidental  to  winning  the  suffrage  ought 
to  yield  a  larger,  more  intelligent,  and  perhaps  militant 
public  backing  to  social  work.  The  war  itself  has  opened 
up  new  phases  of  public  work  to  women,  or  at  least 
has  emphasized  their  inherent  fitness  for  them;  both  in 


192         THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

England  and  America  they  are  serving  as  police,  as  con- 
stables, as  recruiting  agents  for  food  conservation,  in  spe- 
cial protective  work  for  girls.  Since  the  beginning  of  the 
war  nearly  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  women  have 
been  added  to  the  government  service  in  this  country 
alone.  This  new  training  in  administrative  ability  ought 
to  yield  valuable  by-products  to  social  work. 

The  prophet  ceases.  Not  from  weariness  nor  discour- 
agement, however;  for  he  lines  up  with  Amos  and  Joel 
rather  than  with  Jeremiah.  But  why  prophesy  when 
the  event  is  already  upon  us?  Scientific  social  work  and 
heightened  social  perception  are  growing  apace.  New 
definitions  of  human  rights  and  of  social  justice  are  ham- 
mering themselves  out  upon  the  anvils  of  world  tragedy. 
Our  young  men  see  visions  and  even  some  of  our  old  men 
begin  to  dream  dreams.  It  is  to  no  small  degree  in  the 
hands  of  social  workers  to  redeem  those  visions  from 
mere  hallucination  and  to  translate  those  dreams  into 
sober  fact.  If  this  Great  War  ends  war  it  will  do  so  only 
because  we  have  helped  to  canalize  the  energies  which 
now  race  torrentially  toward  military  destruction,  and  to 
turn  them  in  the  direction  of  solving  those  inexorable, 
indivertible  social  problems  which  without  the  slightest 
resort  to  metaphor  may  well  be  called  the  moral  equiva- 
lents of  war. 


CHAPTER  IX 

SOCIAL  PROGRESS  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

In  those  rare  moments  when  the  busy  professional 
person  seizes  a  bit  of  leisure  to  think  some  show  of  order 
into  the  tangled  mass  of  events  that  assail  him  day  after 
day,  he  is  frequently  the  victim  of  two  opposing  ideas. 
First  he  succumbs  to  a  sense  of  futility,  the  foolishness 
of  trymg  to  do  anything  with  this  disease  called  human 
life  or  civilization  or  to  the  conviction  that  we  are  but 
the  footballs  of  circumstance,  the  puppets  of  blind  forces 
beyond  mortal  reach.  Or  else  he  shakes  off  this  supine 
and  paralyzing  belief  and  flies  to  the  other  extreme,  be- 
comes exhilarated  by  the  thought  that  man  is  the  meas- 
ure of  all  things,  and  ends  by  preening  himself  upon 
being  the  real  Atlas  who  carries  the  world  and  would  not 
yield  it  up  even  to  Hercules  himself.  But  between  these 
two  extremes  of  passive  pessimism  and  unctuous  egotism 
there  lies  a  middle  ground  which  may  be  surveyed  in  the 
scientific  spirit  as  the  basis  for  a  sound  structure  of  the 
principles  and  practice  of  social  progress.  And  it  is  on 
this  middle  ground  that  the  social  worker  must  plant 
himself. 

The  notion  of  progress  is  neither  a  joke  nor  a  chimera. 
It  is  a  scientific  concept,  just  about  as  definite  as  most 
leading  ideas  in  this  world,  although  not  claiming  the 
fine  simplicity  of  a  mathematical  formula.  This  concept 
involves  the  idea  that  man  is  potentially  progressive 
and  modifiable  in  nature.  One  suggestive  proof  at  least 
is  modern  man's  threefold  superiority  to  his  primitive 
ancestry.  Modem  man  has  outstripped  primitive  life 
through  the  mass  and  sweep  of  his  intelligence,  through 

193 


194         THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

inventions  for  insuring  him  against  raw  Nature's  vicis- 
situdes, and  through  his  social  integration.  Progress  as 
we  conceive  it  involves,  moreover,  the  idea  of  active 
control  over  fate;  of  mastery  over  blind  drift.  That  is 
to  say,  progress  is  not  inevitable  nor  automatic  nor 
universal  nor  in  the  nature  of  things;  it  is  rather  rare,  it 
is  costly,  and  it  comes  only  through  human  effort  rightly 
directed,  through  the  ministry  of  thought,  through  in- 
telligence consecrated  to  the  supreme  purpose  of  human 
betterment.  Man  must  work  out  his  own  salvation,  he 
must  control  or  perish,  he  must  learn  the  rules  of  the 
game  in  order  to  utilize  the  forces  of  the  universe  for  his 
own  purposes;  but  he  must  have  a  purpose.  Hence 
resolute  determination  is  fundamental;  mere  pious  long- 
ing or  daydreaming  of  Utopias  will  not  do  the  job.  It 
may  be  that  in  spite  of  taking  thought  to  master  fate 
and  captain  its  soul  humanity  may  perish  stillborn  in 
the  womb  of  an  unwilling  Mother  Nature  or  may  be 
devoured  by  hostile  cosmic  forces;  but  it  is  safe  to  say 
that  without  effort  such  a  fate  is  almost  inevitable, 
while  with  it  there  is  at  least  a  good  fighting  chance  of 
victory  and  improvement. 

To  that  putting  forth  of  effort  the  social  worker  con- 
tributes in  two  ways :  through  case  work  with  individuals 
or  families,  and  through  general  measures  of  utility  to 
whole  classes  or  groups.  Case  work  recognizes  that  so- 
cial advance  requires  a  progressive  amelioration  of  hu- 
man character,  growth  in  knowledge,  self-control,  pro- 
ductive capacity,  obedience,  loyalty,  thrift,  teamwork, 
unselfishness,  prudence,  and  imagination.  Legislation 
and  other  mass  measures  for  social  reconstruction  recog- 
nize, on  the  other  hand,  that  human  character  cannot 
develop  in  a  vacuum  nor  subsist  on  nothing:  it  needs  a 
proper  social  environment  with  education,  discipline, 
controls,  rewards,  penalties,  and  opportunity.  Let  me 
illustrate. 

Social  life,  we  say  in  sociology,  is  determined  by  three 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  AND   SOCIAL  WORK  195 

great  "controls,"  the  physical  environment,  man's  own 
nature  (physical  and  mental  inheritance),  and  social 
heredity  (institutions,  customs,  beliefs,  laws,  and  the 
like).  Now  in  each  of  these  fields  of  control  social  work 
may  perform  its  twofold  function.  For  example,  the 
physical  en\'ironment  may  rise  up  and  smite,  as  it  fre- 
quently does,  by  earthquake  or  volcano  or  cyclone  or 
flood  or  tornado.  Social  work  hastens  to  soften  the  blow 
by  disaster  rehef  to  individuals.  Incidentally,  however, 
it  gathers  the  facts  with  which  to  point  the  way  to  flood 
and  fire  prevention,  or  other  methods  of  protecting 
whole  companies  of  men  against  the  wild  vagaries  of 
physical  nature.  Again,  social  work  may  figure  in  the 
field  of  biological  control,  either  negatively  by  preventing 
the  adverse  selection  which  results  from  unwise  charity, 
or  positively  through  aiding  favorable  selection  by  offer- 
ing to  natural  endowments  of  mind  and  body  the  widest 
and  freest  social  opportunity  for  development.  The  so- 
cial worker  who  checks  the  mating  and  the  multiplying 
of  the  feeble-minded  or  venereal  is  serving  racial  progress 
by  preserving  the  level  of  racial  fitness  won  through  long 
ages  of  biological  selection.  Likewise  by  rescuing  sound, 
fit  children  and  placing  them  in  decent  homes  social  work 
aids  both  social  and  racial  progress  since  it  saves  and  re- 
leases potential  productive  capacity. 

When  we  come  to  the  role  of  social  work  in  adjusting 
or  repairing  man's  own  handiwork,  his  social  organiza- 
tion, we  are  overwhelmed  with  materials.  War,  for  ex- 
ample, the  selector  between  rival  social  structures,  de- 
stroys more  than  it  creates.  The  last  five  years  of  war 
have  seen  a  greater  holocaust  of  life  and  property  than  a 
whole  century  of  natural  calamities  piled  up.  And  it 
would  have  been  even  more  destructive  were  it  not  for 
the  Red  Cross,  the  patriotic  funds,  the  insurance,  the 
munitions  welfare  work,  and  other  mitigations  of  stark 
misery  at  home  and  abroad.  Again,  social  work  stands 
squarely  against  allowing  Frankenstein  to  become  the 


196         THE   SCIENTEFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

victim  of  his  monster,  private  property,  when  that  prop- 
erty system  invades  the  still  more  sacred  rights  of  per- 
sons. Thus  the  social  worker  stands  frequently  as  a 
shock  absorber  between  capital  and  labor.  Social  case 
work,  too,  dealing  with  family  problems,  opens  up  the 
whole  problem  of  the  relationship  between  the  family 
as  an  institution  and  human  progress. 

Such  illustrations  might  be  added  indefinitely,  but 
these  few  will  suffice  to  estabHsh  the  fact  that  social  work 
as  a  progressive  factor  might  be  interpreted  in  terms  of 
the  great  fundamental  controls  over  social  destiny.  It 
stands  as  padding  against  the  buffetings  of  the  physical 
environment,  it  aids  in  keeping  unobstructed  the  chan- 
nels of  human  biology,  and  it  modifies  and  promotes  the 
institutional  hfe  of  mankind.  Hence  it  is  a  part  of  prac- 
tical sociology  or  social  technology,  the  art  of  community 
control  over  fate. 

So  far  very  well,  you  say;  but  how  does  that  tell  me 
whether  my  particular  hobby,  say,  community  surveying 
or  birth  control  or  health  insurance,  makes  for  social  prog- 
ress? Not  every  social-welfare  scheme  can  be  passed  in 
review  here,  but  certain  objective  tests  can  be  laid  down 
by  reference  to  which  any  scheme  may  be  judged.  At 
least  five  fairly  workable  tests  have  been  estabUshed  in 
the  attempt  to  give  concrete  meaning  to  the  term  social 
progress.  We  may  for  brevity  call  them  the  wealth, 
health,  population,  order,  and  opportunity  tests.  Let  us 
take  them  one  by  one  and  see  what  they  really  mean. 

In  applying  the  wealth  test  we  are  not  to  be  so  naive 
as  to  suppose,  for  example,  that  because  the  recorded  per 
capita  wealth  of  the  United  States  leaped  from  $308  in 
1850  to  $1965  in  1912  the  average  inhabitant  of  this 
country  was  six  times  better  off  at  the  end  of  those  sixty- 
two  years.  Much  of  this  presumed  "wealth"  is  merely 
heightened  valuation  of  lands  or  securities.  The  actual 
land  or  its  products  in  consumable  goods  did  not  in- 
crease sixfold.    Nor  did  every  individual's  share  increase 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  AND   SOCIAL  WORK  197 

equally  or  even  proportionately,  as  studies  of  ownership 
have  disclosed.  What  the  social  worker  must  know  be- 
fore he  can  decide  that  his  particular  scheme  is  progres- 
sive in  terms  of  real  commimity  wealth  is  whether  pro- 
ductive skill  and  the  will  to  produce  are  growing,  whether 
the  stock  of  houses  and  coal  and  potatoes  and  milk  and 
good  wearing  cloth  is  actually  expanding  or  whether  only 
prices  are  going  up ;  whether  increasing  wealth  means  in- 
creasing leisure  or  only  overwork;  whether  the  increased 
product  really  reaches  people  who  are  cold  or  hungry  or 
ill-housed  or  thinly  clad  or  whether  it  is  wasted  by  faulty 
distribution  or  deUberately  destroyed  by  the  profiteers 
for  the  sake  of  maintaining  scarcity  prices;  whether 
prosperity  is  really  passed  around  in  such  a  way  that 
every  normal  person  shall  possess  at  least  enough 
property  to  acquire  the  discipline  and  stability  which 
come  from  ownership  and  the  feeling  of  having  some 
stake  in  the  common  Hfe;  whether  the  piled-up  wealth 
is  the  mainspring  of  domestic  broils  and  international 
wars  or  a  source  of  peace  and  domestic  tranquillity.  The 
wealth  test  is  not  so  simple  as  it  sounds.  By  this  analysis 
of  its  wider  meanings  must  you  judge  your  minimum- 
wage  law,  your  income  tax,  your  profit-sharing  scheme, 
your  factory-welfare  work,  your  state  or  municipal  owner- 
ship, and  your  cooperative  commonwealth. 

Or  take  the  health  test.  A  declining  general  or  infan- 
tiel  death  rate  or  an  increasing  Hfe  span  has  been  called 
the  verifiable  test  for  a  progressive  community.  But  it  is 
not  to  be  taken  as  absolute  or  unique.  Before  becoming 
too  complacent  over  saving  the  lives  of  a  hundred  thou- 
sand babies  in  one  year — a  noble  and  chivalrous  purpose 
beyond  doubt — one  must  be  sure  that  he  is  not  saving 
human  trash  and  piling  up  social  liabilities  or  that  he  is 
not  encouraging  heedless  padding  of  the  birth  rate.  And 
before  concluding  that  to  prolong  the  average  length  of 
life  is  an  absolute  good  one  must  be  sure  that  life  is  made 
worth  living  and  that  the  extra  lap  added  is  not  a  sen- 


198         THE  SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

tence  to  pain,  slow  starvation,  misery,  and  friendless- 
ness.  It  is  not  mere  vegetative  existence  but  the  life  more 
abundant  which  must  add  the  convincing  and  determin- 
ing seal  of  approval  to  all  health  work.  Remember  in 
your  hospital  social  service  or  anti-tuberculosis  work, 
your  baby  clinics  and  maternity  hospitals  and  school 
inspections,  that  while  death  is  a  tragic  waste,  it  is  not 
the  supreme  tragedy.  A  life  of  futility,  of  unrequited 
and  unilluminated  toil,  without  hope,  without  a  goal, 
without  the  exaltations  that  come  from  a  sense  of  accom- 
plishment and  worth-whileness,  this  is  the  final  touch  of 
bitter  irony,  this  is  the  real  mortahty  which  social  work 
is  called  upon  to  combat  and  conquer. 

These  two  tests  converge  upon  the  third,  the  popula- 
tion test.  It  is  usually  assumed  that  an  increasing  popu- 
lation is  the  mark  of  a  progressive  group,  while  a  declin- 
ing or  stationary  population  implies  social  decadence  or 
impairment  of  racial  vitality.  But  this  bald  statement 
of  the  case  needs  much  qualification.  There  is  no  indis- 
putable mark  of  virtue  or  superiority  in  a  high  birth  rate, 
for  militarism  or  ruthless  capitalism  or  lust  or  sentimen- 
tality or  an  ambitious  church  may  manipulate  the  organs 
of  social  control  to  subject  women  to  sexual  slavery  and 
to  stimulate  men  to  unbridled  paternity.  There  has  been 
altogether  too  much  of  Luther's  fatalistic  optimism  urg- 
ing to  be  fruitful  and  multiply  for  God  would  provide. 
Nor,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  low  birth  rate  or  a  stationary 
population  an  inevitable  mark  of  social  degeneracy.  Who 
since  the  Marne  or  Verdun  dares  to  call  France  decadent? 
Or  who  lifts  the  voice  in  praise  of  German  and  Austrian 
superiority  because  of  their  birth  rates?  What  we  are 
after  is  not  large  populations,  but  good,  sound,  healthy, 
integrated,  intelligent  populations.  We  reckon  not  by 
how  many  babies  are  born,  but  by  how  many  we  rear  and 
make  into  productive  citizens.  Net  birth  rate  counts. 
Both  positive  and  negative  eugenics  focus  on  this  princi- 
ple.   Hence  sound  social  work,  like  sound  statesmanship, 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS   AND   SOCIAL  WORK  199 

is  to  be  judged  by  what  it  does  to  promote  a  high  aver- 
age of  health,  vitality,  and  capacity  in  a  population. 
This  is  the  measuring  stick  which  must  inexorably  be  ap- 
plied to  all  such  proposals  as  birth  control,  sterilization 
or  segregation  of  the  unfit,  encouragement  of  the  fit  to 
mate,  endowment  of  motherhood, "  absolute  motherhood," 
and  all  such  war-time  devices  to  repair  the  ravages  among 
male  population  as  marriages  by  proxy,  war  brides,  polyg- 
amy, and  official  illegitimacy.  If  the  Great  War  brings 
us  nearer  a  League  of  Nations,  a  League  to  Enforce  Peace, 
or  some  other  new  international  organization  to  keep  the 
peace,  this  test  of  high  average  fitness  stands  a  still 
greater  chance  of  prevailing  over  the  older  rabbit-hutch 
policy  of  national  strength.  For  the  smaller  nations  are 
apparently  coming  into  their  own  through  some  princi- 
ple of  federation  which  tends  to  nullify  the  law  of  the 
big  battalions.  The  new  law  of  population  resembles  the 
formula  for  the  quantity  of  money,  which  states  that  the 
quantity  of  money  is  the  total  amount  of  all  kinds  of  cir- 
culable  media — metal  currency,  checks,  and  so  forth, 
multiplied  by  the  rapidity  of  circulation  or  turnover. 
Accordingly  national  strength  is  expressed  by  the  total 
units  of  population  multiplied  by  their  average  mobility  and 
capacity  (N  S  =P  X  AC). 

This  is  the  clearest  cue  for  the  social  worker,  and  it  in- 
volves another;  namely,  that  to  secure  the  highest  aver- 
age capacity  useful  social  variations  must  be  favored  and 
stimulated.  In  plain  English  this  means  working  against 
dead-levelism  or  sheep-mindedness  and  encouraging  a 
considerable  dash  of  heresy,  independence  of  thought, 
innovation,  and  initiative.  In  practice  this  necessitates 
freedom  of  discussion  and  daring  to  think  over  or  discuss 
even  the  most  untoward  and  ticklish  subjects.  I  do  not 
mean  that  the  social  worker  is  to  promote  anarchy  or  sub- 
sidize free  love.  I  do  not  mean  that  social  workers  should 
be  uncompromising  radicals.  They  need  neither  smoke, 
gamble,  drink  cocktails,  nor  join  the  Sinn  Fein  to  qualify 


200         THE    SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT   AND    SOCIAL   WORK 

for  their  profession.  But  neither  should  they  be  afraid  to 
tackle  any  proposal  or  practice  on  its  merits  however 
hoary  with  taboo  it  may  be.  Social  work  should  lend  its 
aid  everywhere  and  always  to  any  move  which  promises 
to  develop  the  open  mind;  for  the  open  mind,  the  flexible 
mind,  the  elastic  mind  is  the  first  condition  of  progress, 
since  progress  is  fundamentally  growth  from  error  into 
truth.  This  is  the  function  of  constructive  discontent. 
No  true  social  worker  is  complacent;  he  must  be  divinely 
discontented,  for  discontent  with  what  was  built  this 
world  and  will  rebuild  it  into  the  City  of  God. 

But  constructive  discontent  requires  opportunity  to 
function  progressively.  Balked  or  constricted  or  denied 
expression  it  festers  and  irritates  or  explodes  into  aim- 
less violence.  Hence  the  test  of  social  opportunity  as  a 
test  of  progressive  social  work.  By  opportunity  I  mean 
the  chance  to  be  well  born,  to  be  decently  cared  for  dur- 
ing childhood,  to  be  decently  educated,  to  play;  a  chance 
to  develop  one's  productive  skill;  a  chance  of  getting  into 
the  place  where  one's  abilities,  native  and  acquired,  can 
express  themselves  to  their  highest;  access  to  all  the  great 
heritage  of  culture  that  the  ages  have  compounded  and 
sent  down  to  us;  and  the  chance  to  participate  in  every 
normal  social  activity  for  which  we  are  fitted.  The  world 
is  sprinkled  with  morons,  but,  after  all,  the  normal  ex- 
ceed the  abnormal  nearly  ten  to  one;  and  an  almost  in- 
credible store  of  talent  lies  latent  and  undeveloped  in  the 
great  averages  of  mankind.  The  social  worker's  chief 
positive  task  through  case  work  and  mass  work  is  to  un- 
lock this  store  of  productive  ability,  to  turn  it  into  indus- 
try, thrift,  creative  art,  and  citizenship.  The  new  democ- 
racy of  which  we  dream  will  be  progressive  and  indeed 
possible  only  as  we  are  able  to  develop  a  skilled  leader- 
ship consecrated  to  unselfish  service,  and  a  sufficient  meas- 
ure of  income,  leisure,  and  education  to  enable  the  average 
citizen  to  sense  the  common  need,  to  feel  the  thrill  of  the 
common  purpose,  and  to  enlist  for  its  realization.     This 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  AND   SOCIAL  WORK  20I 

socializing  of  opportunity  is  the  testing  stone  for  all  such 
projects  as  vocational  training  and  guidance,  limitation 
of  child  labor,  continuation  schools,  vocational  therapy, 
the  universal  franchise,  the  right  to  organize  for  collec- 
tive bargaining,  and  many  of  the  other  ''rights"  which 
men  have  claimed  and  fought  for  in  the  last  hundred 
years.  It  is  Ukewise  the  core  to  the  idea  of  democracy  if 
that  word  has  any  solid  content  whatever.  Morover,  it 
confers  real  meaning  upon  the  struggle  to  control  the  con- 
ditions which  menace  Ufe  and  health,  for  it  adds  the  idea 
of  quality  to  the  otherwise  empty  gain  of  mere  length 
of  days.  Finally,  it  is  the  only  method  by  which  con- 
tributive  as  contrasted  with  dependent  types  of  social 
personality  can  be  created  or  educated. 

The  last  test,  that  of  order  and  stability,  involves  many 
problems  deeply  imbedded  in  the  theory  and  practice  of 
social  work.  For  crime,  poverty,  broken  family  life,  mi- 
gratory labor,  and  war  all  tear  holes  in  the  fabric  of  so- 
cial order.  Let  no  one  be  deceived  into  beUeving  that 
these  are  necessary  "costs  of  progress,"  even  though 
sometimes  they  appear  like  the  mud  stirred  through  the 
social  stream  when  its  course  is  changed  in  a^  period  of 
transition.  Crime  is  an  index  of  progress  only  in  a  some- 
what paradoxical  sense;  that  is,  if  the  rate  of  serious 
crime  diminishes  while  that  of  newer  and  pettier  offenses 
rises,  it  may  indicate  that  the  social  conscience  is  growing 
more  sensitive  and  begins  to  recognize  as  crimes  acts 
which  heretofore  have  been  tolerated.  In  this  sense  so- 
cial work  may  contribute  to  progress,  by  searching  out 
some  of  the  more  imponderable  factors  in  crimmal  cau- 
sation and  in  helping  to  brand  as  distinctly  anti-social 
acts  which  we  have  been  in  the  habit  of  considering  as 
only  unsocial  or  even  as  shrewd  business  practice.  Laws 
against  food  adulteration,  unfair  prices,  sweated  or 
child-made  goods,  truck  payment,  and  usury  illustrate 
how  social  censure  crystallizes  itself  into  the  criminal 
code. 


202  THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

Let  me  repeat  that  poverty  is  not  a  legitimate  cost  of 
progress.  It  is  rather  the  index  of  social  ineptitude  and 
retardation.  When  we  think  of  Europe  as  having  made 
progress  since  the  Black  Death  in  spite  of  all  handicaps 
of  war  or  pestilence,  it  is  not  only  because  of  the  great 
era  of  invention,  discovery,  fine  arts,  and  State  building, 
but  also  because  in  these  five  centuries  we  have  risen  from 
a  condition  where  nine-tenths  of  the  people  were  at  the 
poverty  line  to  a  level  where  scarcely  more  than  one-tenth 
are  so  submerged.  This  insurance  aspect  of  social  life 
is  one  of  the  surest  objective  measures  of  material  prog- 
ress. But  it  is  more  than  that,  since  poverty  means  the 
development  of  intelligence,  of  independence,  and  of  the 
courage  which  is  born  of  a  sense  of  possible  control  over 
hostile  forces.  Involuntary  poverty  is  the  submerged 
mind.  The  significance  of  that  fact  appears  when  you  re- 
member that  all  human  culture,  all  the  finer  things  which 
make  Hfe  worth  while  are  the  product  of  leisure  activi- 
ties. Enforced  poverty  inhibits  creative  activity  and 
expresses  itself  only  in  dull  resentment  or  passivity.  The 
aboUtion  of  poverty,  then,  will  not  only  remove  a  toxin 
which  limits  productivity  but  will  release  immense  res- 
ervoirs of  creative  capacity  in  art  and  industry  and  citi- 
zenship. Make  no  apologies,  then,  to  the  theorists  of 
social  progress  for  any  and  every  attempt  to  wipe  out 
poverty.  Every  stroke  against  it  cuts  away  another  bit  of 
the  jungle  which  hinders  our  onward  march.  "Poverty, " 
said  Aristotle,  "is  the  parent  of  revolution  and  crime." 
Every  social  measure  reducing  it  becomes  thus  a  new 
block  in  the  great  highway  to  social  order,  stability,  and 
justice. 

So  long  as  men  continue  this  side  of  heaven  to  dwell 
in  families  the  stability  of  family  life  is  of  grave  con- 
cern to  social  order.  Whatever,  therefore,  social  workers 
can  do  to  promote  sane  matings  or  reduce  domestic 
friction  is  so  much  to  the  good  in  terms  of  social  prog- 
ress.    This  does  not  mean  merely  reducing  illegitimacy 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS   AND   SOCIAL  WORK  203 

or  divorce.  It  means  also  releasing  women  from  sexual 
dependence,  it  means  controlled  reproduction,  it  means 
adequate  leisure  and  income  for  companionship  and 
efficient  parenthood,  it  means  rational  comradeship,  it 
means  some  method  by  which  obvious  and  unnecessary 
mistakes  in  mating  may  be  prevented  before  they  reach 
the  altar  or  the  divorce  court.  It  means  working  out  a 
new  technique,  perhaps,  for  forecasting  the  mental  antag- 
onisms and  temperamental  twists  which  result  in  sex 
neuroses,  hysterias,  and  all  the  other  pathologic  problems 
which  fall  to  the  lot  of  the  psycho-analyst.  It  means, 
finally,  to  make  of  the  home  not  an  absurd  fetish,  but  a 
radiating  center  for  the  virtues  of  friendship  and  hos- 
pitality and  for  other  intangible  but  no  less  socially  val- 
uable aesthetic  products. 

The  bearing  of  this  concept  of  the  family  upon  such 
a  phenomenon  as  the  migratory  worker  is  patent  enough. 
For  founding  a  home  is  an  adventure  in  social  order.  The 
home  builder  and  property  owner  is  courted  by  Church 
and  State  and  employer  alike.  A  system  of  industry 
that  depends  upon  or  encourages  the  bird  of  passage  is 
economically  no  less  than  morally  wasteful.  Just  one 
illustration  will  prove  this.  Prostitution  and  venereal 
disease  are  economic  wastes,  whether  you  measure  them 
in  the  short  run  or  the  long  run,  whether  in  terms  of  sick- 
ness, unemployment,  irregular  output,  police  costs,  or 
depleted  race  vitality.  And  they  will  remain  unsolved 
social  problems  so  long  as  armies  of  casual  workers  roam 
about  lacking  the  ballast  of  home  ties  themselves  and 
disturbing  the  normal  ratio  of  the  sexes  in  the  communi- 
ties where  they  camp.  Whatever,  then,  social  workers 
can  do  to  stabilize  the  mentally  normal  migratory  worker 
and  to  make  it  possible  for  him  through  proper  voca- 
tional training  and  decent  income  to  settle  down  into  the 
domestic  harness  may  be  set  off  as  a  progress  asset.  Civ- 
ilized man  with  his  marvelous  means  of  transportation 
must  beware  of  falling  a  victim  to  his  own  devices.    In 


204         THE   SCIENTIFIC   SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

his  annihilation  of  space  he  must  heed  lest  he  annihilate 
many  of  those  most  precious,  salutary  responsibilities 
and  ties  which  have  made  him  ordered  man  out  of  the 
irresponsible  and  vagrant  savage. 

At  first  glance  it  would  seem  that  social  work  as  such 
could  do  nothing  to  reduce  the  anarchy  of  war.  But 
closer  analysis  shows  many  openings  for  direct  and  in- 
direct service.  First  of  all  I  suppose  the  social  worker 
serves  the  cause  of  human  order  and  progress  by  being  a 
real  pacifist,  by  his  insistence  upon  the  substitution  of 
mediation  and  rational  persuasion  for  blind  force  in  the 
settlement  of  group  conflicts.  Let  there  be  no  misunder- 
standing about  what  I  mean  by  pacifism  in  general  or 
with  reference  to  the  present  war.  There  is  a  whole 
universe  of  difference  between  pacifism  and  passivism. 
I  call  myself  a  scientific  pacifist  and  can  only  see  in  war 
more  of  wastage  than  of  profit  to  humanity,  but  I  want 
to  see  the  conflict  through  which  we  have  just  passed 
fought  through  to  a  successful  finish  in  the  shape  of  sta- 
bility, order,  and  wholesome  discipline.  I  want  peace,  a 
durable  peace,  through  the  creation  of  new  understand- 
ings and  new  soUdarities  between  nations,  after  they  have 
tried  vainly  by  wholesale  murder  and  anarchy  to  adjust 
their  grievances. 

The  trouble  with  America  during  the  first  years  of  this 
war  was  not,  however,  the  pacifism  of  a  few  social  workers 
and  religious  leaders;  much  of  that  pacifism  was  genuine 
and  serviceable,  some  of  it  was  questionable  posing,  affec- 
tation, or  downright  cowardice.  But  the  real  trouble 
was  passivism,  sentimentality,  international  myopia,  and 
an  utterly  unscientific  sense  of  our  remoteness  from  and 
unconcern  with  what  was  going  on  in  the  cockpit  of 
Europe.  We  sat  cultivating  international  laissez  /aire, 
and  with  a  tragic  lack  of  perspective  beHeved  that  mani- 
fest destiny  would  bring  us  out  on  top  of  the  human  heap 
unscathed,  even  though  rather  inglorious.  It  took  three 
years  for  us  to  wake  up  to  the  fact  that  we  are  all  of  one 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS  AND   SOCIAL  WORK  205 

blood,  part  and  parcel  of  each  other,  and  that  the  trag- 
edy of  Europe  involved  us  inexorably. 

I  am  afraid  that  it  took  us  social  workers  also  a  long 
time  to  waken  to  the  true  situation  and  to  reach  the 
conclusion  that  true  pacifism  if  it  would  combat  mili- 
tarism must  fight  now  and  fight  with  grimmest  deter- 
mination. Fortunate  it  is  for  ourselves  and  fortunate 
for  this  country  if  we  have  screwed  up  our  minds  to  grasp 
the  fact  that  war  is  not  to  be  eliminated  by  supine  sub- 
jection to  the  Hun,  whatever  his  guise,  but  by  applying 
the  police  idea  to  international  affairs  and  by  sublimating 
the  war  impulse.  Organized  poHcing  has  aided  enor- 
mously m  cutting  down  the  toll  of  violent  crimes  in  the 
last  century.  As  I  see  it,  America  has  determined  that 
this  same  effective  policing  shall  be  introduced  to  control 
and  checkmate  nations  which  pillage  and  rob  and  mur- 
der wantonly,  and  to  grapple  with,  intern,  or  even  exter- 
minate the  implacable  and  the  insane  nations.  In  other 
words,  just  as  the  violent  and  bloody  types  of  men  have 
been  weeded  out  through  the  selective  process  of  law  and 
criminal  justice  within  groups,  so  also  a  similar  system 
must  be  set  up  and  operated  for  selecting  to  final  ex- 
tinction the  lawless  and  willful  nations  of  the  earth. 

Social  workers  can  accomplish  a  great  task  of  media- 
tion and  interpretation  by  spreading  this  police  concept 
of  America's  war,  peace  and  reconstruction  mission. 
This  is  a  form  of  constructive  patriotism  for  which  social 
workers  are  pecuHarly  fitted  since  they  by  the  very  na- 
ture of  their  profession  must  come  into  close  contact  with 
the  humble,  the  ignorant,  the  foreign  bom,  and  the 
dismherited  whose  apathy  or  hostility  to  America's  pur- 
poses has  been  so  largely  the  result  of  our  poKcy  of  neg- 
lect and  insouciance.  The  creation  of  interracial  under- 
standings, the  ministry  of  amalgamation,  the  easing  up  of 
social  adaptations — all  these  are  the  peculiar  function  of 
our  profession.  In  sociological  parlance  the  social  worker 
is  an  agent  for  social  pollination,  or  cross-fertilization  of 


2o6         THE   SCIENTIFIC    SPIRIT  AND   SOCIAL  WORK 

cultures.  Need  I  illustrate  by  the  labors  of  Jane  Addams, 
Mary  MacDowell,  Robert  Woods,  Peter  Roberts,  Graham 
Taylor,  or  a  score  of  others? 

Moreover,  in  the  most  literal  sense  social  work  is  real 
military  preparedness.  Only  a  sound,  intelligent  popu- 
lation can  make  a  good  fighting  machine  in  these  days  of 
colossal  conflict.  Whatever  prevents  social  deteriora- 
tion aids  in  this  protective  work.  Think,  too,  of  the  great 
tasks  turned  over  to  social  workers  in  preparing  our 
armies,  in  maintaining  war  morale — the  work  of  the  Red 
Cross,  the  Fosdick  Commission,  the  War  Camp  Com- 
munity Service,  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  and  other  great  organ- 
izations laboring  as  official  or  quasi-official  adjuncts  to 
the  army  and  navy.  The  government's  stupendous  war- 
time social-welfare  policy  was  at  once  the  greatest  oppor- 
tunity professional  social  work  ever  had,  and  its  great- 
est challenge. 

It  is  from  this  standpoint  that  we  are  wholly  justified 
in  hazarding  the  belief  that  social  work  itself  may  turn 
out  to  be  one  of  the  "moral  equivalents  of  war,"  a  sub- 
limation of  the  impulse  to  fight,  a  technique,  and  a  field  of 
battle.  Is  it  beyond  possibility  that  the  vigorous  business 
and  professional  men  who  enlisted  in  the  various  forms 
of  noncombatant  war  service  when  disqualified  for  army 
or  navy  will  yield  to  the  fascination  of  fighting  alcohol  and 
vice  and  laziness  and  thriftlessness  and  extravagance  and 
sickness  and  bad  housing  and  industrial  exploitation  after 
the  wars  are  over?  Some,  of  course,  will  be  glad  to 
get  back  to  money-making  and  whist  and  beer,  glad  to 
be  done  with  committees  and  drives  and  solicitation. 
But  many  more  will  find  it  impossible  to  settle  back  into 
the  old  ways  of  letting  things  drift  and  of  doing  good 
vicariously.  They  will  want  to  consolidate  victory,  to 
gather  the  fruits  of  peace  in  a  democracy  of  service,  and 
to  make  sure  by  their  own  contributions  that  this  fear- 
ful struggle  shall  not  have  been  in  .vain. 

These,  then,  are  some  of  the  implications  of  social  prog- 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS   AND   SOCIAL  WORK  207 

ress  as  they  touch  scientific  social  work.  Remember, 
however,  that  humanity  has  been  at  least  half  a  million 
years  in  the  making,  and  that  in  consequence  human  re- 
construction and  social  progress  are  slow.  Science  is 
purposive  and  ameliorative,  but  it  is  also  patient.  The 
late  Vice  President  Fairbanks  left  a  trust  fund  of  $50,000 
the  income  of  which  is  to  be  distributed  to  social-welfare 
agencies  every  fifty  years  for  five  hundred  years.  For 
five  hundred  years!  Was  this  Indiana  conservatism 
wielding  the  dead  hand,  or  was  it  common  sense?  Five 
hundreds  years!  Not  even  the  eugenists  or  the  Bolshe- 
viki  could  transform  the  world  in  five  centuries.  Cheap 
houses  can  be  build  overnight  on  the  sand,  but  the  gos- 
pels tell  us  of  their  speedy  end.  The  road  to  the  great 
house  of  many  mansions  which  humanity  is  building  for 
itself  is  long  and  winding;  it  has  to  be  built  over  morasses 
of  human  depravity  which  must  be  drained;  it  must  be 
blasted  through  mountain  ranges  of  selfishness  and  prej- 
udice; it  must  skirt  giddy  chasms  full  of  the  bones  of  the 
unwary.  But  it  is  building,  and  will  continue  building 
just  so  long  as  men  lend  their  science  and  their  love  and 
their  skill  to  the  great  commission.  Is  it  not  a  glorious 
privilege  that  social  workers  are  permitted  to  share  in- 
creasingly in  this  supreme  and  thrilling  enterprise  of  hu- 
man engineering?  That  is  the  goal  of  the  scientific 
spirit,  and  that  also  is  its  highest  reward. 


INDEX 


Abatement  of  public  nuisances, 

IS,  49- 
Accident  prevention,  54,  96. 
Administration  of  philanthropy, 

177. 
Administrative     fimctions     of 

government    extending,    56- 

57- 
Adventurous  spirit,  Ch.  VIII. 
Altruism,  20,  32. 
Americanization,  189. 
Anarchism,   31,  42,    165,    199, 

204. 
Angell,  Norman,  quoted,  179. 
Aristotle,  quoted,  202. 

Bergson,  quoted,  20. 
Birth  control,  15,  196,  199. 
Blackstone,  quoted,  4. 
British  Labor  Party,  10,  164, 

166,  168,  169. 
Bundle  days,  83,  104. 

Capital  and  labor,  196. 
Case-work,  7, 163, 194, 196,  200. 
Causes  of  turnover,  145  ff. 
Censorship,  175. 
Charitable  publicity,  179. 
Charity,  34,  39,  53,  68,  82,  173, 

177. 
Child  labor,  97,  170. 
Child  welfare,  12-13,  loi. 
Christianity,  25-26,  68. 
City  planning,  174. 


Civilization,  no. 
Class  legislation,  5. 
Class  struggle,  2,  36. 
Collective  bargaining,  164-165. 
Collective  control,  45  ff.,  162. 
Comte,  quoted,  18,  19,  29,  35. 
Conservation,  15,  46,  109. 
Conservatives,  6,  8,  42,  69,  91. 
Constructive    criticism,    40  fif., 

162,  175. 
Cooley,  quoted,  22. 
Cost  of  labor  turnover,  133, 156. 
Cost  of  progress,  201,  202. 
Courtesy,  81-82. 
Crime  and  progress,  201. 
Criminals,  improved  care  of,  13. 
Criminal  negligence,  100. 
Criminal  procedure,  191. 
Cutting  down  turnover,  158. 

Dead  center,  Ch.  VI. 
Dead  hand,  in,  207. 
Demobilization,  171,  177. 
Democracy,  45. 
Direct  action,  41,  165. 
Distribution  of  wealth,  50. 
Dodd,  quoted,  50-51. 

Education,  11,  19,  28,  30,  31, 
165,  170,  176,  184,  190. 

Efficiency  tests,  115  fif.,  120. 

Eugenics,  13,  15,  207. 

Expert,  use  of  in  public  service, 
58ff.,  162. 


209 


2IO 


INDEX 


Family,  42,  102,  125,  196,  202.  Law,  30,  32,  190,  201. 

Fatigue,  11,  118,  122.  Leisure,  lo-ii,  18. 

Federal  children's  bureau,  176.  Length    of    service    in    social 
Feeble-minded,  102,  195.  agencies,  142,  143. 

Financial  federation,  180.  Living  wage,  2,  3,  9, 151. 

Freedom  of  speech,  40,  44,  175,  Lynching,  191. 
199. 


Government  as  welfare  agency, 
44  ff-,  52,  53- 

Hadley,  quoted,  49,  51. 


Migratory  labor,  203. 
MiUtary  training,  187. 
Minimum  wage,   10,   52,   166, 

197.  ^ 
Mob  mind,  104. 


Health,  12-13,  54,  99,  186,  189,      Mothers'  pensions,  53, 102, 104, 


197. 
Heretics,  30,  91. 
Housing  reform,  12,  48,  87,  102, 

170,  173,  184. 
Huxley,  quoted,  4,  34,  71-72, 

73,  76. 


Mystic  body,  26,  79. 

National   conference  of  social 

work,  10. 
Nationalizing  land,  etc.,  168. 
Natural  rights,  3. 
Negro,  190. 


Old  age  pensions,  53. 


Illegitimacy,  190,  199,  202. 

Illiteracy,  185. 

Immigration,  189. 

Industrial  democracy,  165. 

Individual,  relation  of  to  social      Pacifism  vs.  passivism,  204. 

group,  Ch.  11.  Philosophic  individuaUsm,   21, 

L  W.  W.'s,  8,  84,  165,  191.  37- 

IneflSciency  in  social  workers,      Physical  degradation,  187. 

causes  of,  122  S.  Plateaus  of  learning,  116-117. 

Infant  mortaHty,  176,  197.  Plato,  quoted,  20. 


Instincts,  24,  67,  no,  184. 
Insurance,  55,  84,  168,  177,  179, 
183,  195,  196,  202. 

Jesus,  35,  75,  77. 


Labor  legislation,  49. 
Laissez  faire,  33,  37,  95,  164. 
Land  policies,  171. 
Lane,  Secretary,  land  policy  of,      Prevention,  39. 
171.  Price  fixing,  166-167 


Play,  184. 

"Police  power,"  14-iS,  45,  49, 

53,  58. 
Poor  law,  13,  100. 
Population   test   for   progress, 

198. 
Poverty,  abolition  of,  94,  202. 
Poverty    and    progress,    201- 

202. 


INDEX 


211 


Private  property,  6,  42,  47,  49, 
58,  196. 

Probation  officers,  30,  72. 

Profession,  marks  of  a,  vii. 

Progress,  6,  17,  32,  163,  Chap. 
IX. 

Progress,  tests  for,  196. 

Progressive,  6,  36,  38. 

Prohibition,  47,  167. 

Prostitution,  203. 

Psychiatric  social  work,  187. 

Pubhc  opinion,  60,  167,  177. 

Pubhc  ownership,  47,  49. 

PubUc  subsidies  to  private  char- 
ity, 103. 

PubUcity,  17s,  182. 

Recreation,  11,  128,  163,  183, 

187. 
Recruiting  social  workers,  148- 

149. 
Red   Cross,    177  ff.,    188,    195, 

206. 
Reformation,  25,  43. 
Relief,  14,  162,  178,  182,  183. 
Religion,  25,  67,  129,  160. 
Rights,   2-6,  9ff.,  25,  41,   50, 

175,  201. 

Sabotage,  8. 

St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  82. 

St.  Vincent  de  Paul,  68. 

Salaries  and  social  work,  124, 

ISO. 
Sanitation,  99. 
Science   and  social  work,  Ch. 

IV. 
Scientific  management,  109. 
Self-interest,  32,  92. 
Sentimentality,  7,  Ch.  V. 
Settlements,  11,  105. 


Shorter  work  day,  10-11,  53, 
171,  190. 

Slavery,  8,  35, 

Small,  quoted,  29. 

Social  duty,  29. 

Social  heredity,  33. 

Social  hygiene,  188. 

Social  opportunity  test  for 
progress,  200. 

Social  psychology,  21  fif. 

"Social  question,"  19,  28. 

Social  solidarity,  31. 

Social  work,  definitions  of,  65  flf. 

Social  work,  as  miUtary  pre- 
paredness, 206. 

Social  work,  as  moral  equiva- 
lent of  war,  206. 

Socialism,  i,  19,  35,  48,  91. 

Society,  theories  of,  4,  22-23, 
27,  80. 

Stages  of  an  idea,  160. 

State,  5,  13,  30,  45,  167,  202. 

Statistics,  41. 

Sterner,  quoted,  18. 

Sumner,  quoted,  4,  18,  37,  71, 
89. 

Sweated  industry,  175. 

Syndicalism,  2. 

Tag  days,  39,  103. 
Tax  reform,  96,  166,  180. 
Trades  Unions,  i,  10. 
Training  for  public  service,  59. 
Training  for  social  work,   126, 

131,  153  ff-,  159,  181. 
Trustification  of  philanthrophy, 

177. 
Turnover  in  staff,  Ch.  VII. 

Unemployment,  54,  84,  94,  170, 
190. 


212 


INDEX 


Vestigial  philanthrophy,  iii  fif. 
Volunteer  social  workers,   Ch. 
VII,  182. 

War,  effects  on  social  work,  11- 
12,  37,  38,  40,  59,  161  £f. 


War  chests,  180. 
Wealth  as  test  of  progress,  196 
Wells,  quoted,  74,  90,  93. 
Whitman,  quoted,  22. 
Women's  public  service,  191. 
Women's  rights,  14,  191. 


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